Week One In Retrospect

Share time!  And yes, it involves a rant.  I've recently been going back and adding labels to many of my older blogs, and it's quite telling when you have, like, 72 posts labeled 'Rants' and the next highest label category has a mere 25 posts.  I apparently like to rant.  Sue me.


So. After the fiasco that was Day One of my big 'reporting to the ship' adventure, the rest of the week was somewhat anticlimactic.  However, I've definitely made some interesting observations.


Even though I'm a Nuke, I often find myself highly annoyed by other Nukes.  So many of them are exasperatingly nerdy, stupid, irritating and just plain weird.  I once voiced my annoyance to one of my instructors, who looked at me, nodded in agreement and then told me, "You need to get over it.  You think some of the people here are retarded?  Wait 'til you get out to the Fleet and have to interact with other rates and other people besides Nukes... some of them are reeeeeaaaallly dumb."


I now understand what he meant.  Some of the other people who also showed up this week to report to the ship are quite, well... interesting.  To put it mildly.


For example:


While outside at the smoking hut, I struck up a conversation with a girl who was a second class.  I asked her about her rate and she told me that she was an ABE.  She went on to tell me that she used to be an AG ~ basically like a weatherman ~ until she failed out of forecasting school and had to be re-rated to another job.

WTF?  How does one fail out of forecasting school?  How do you fail at forecasting the weather?  It's the only job where you can be wrong all the time and never get fired.  All you have to do is lick your finger and hold it up to decide which direction the wind is coming from.  Well, that and squint up at the sky and say, "Partly sunny with a chance of afternoon showers."

Okay, so it's probably not quite that simple, but still... you should not complain about the difficulties of being a weather girl to a bunch of your fellow shipmates who just spent two years busting their asses to get through the most academically challenging technical school in the entire U.S. Armed Forces.  It's annoying and we really have no sympathy for you.

She must've noticed the pitying looks on some of our faces that said, "I'm sorry you're so stupid that you failed forecasting school," because her next move ~ in an attempt to prove that she was smart and should not have failed forecasting school ~ was to brag, "I can tell you right now that it's.... 46 degrees out right now, give or take a degree."  One of the guys (being of course a Nuke, and therefore a total smart-ass) whipped out his iPhone and opened  his Weather Channel app. "No it's not, it's actually 35 degrees out right now."  She then defensively started back-pedaling and arguing that the barometric pressure and humidity and other factors must be making it feel warmer than outside than it really was.

Mmmmmkay.  Nope.  Total fail... and I didn't go to forecasting school, but it definitely felt like 30ish degrees outside.  I felt bad for this girl because I could tell she knew she was making an ass out of herself, and I wanted to tell her, "Quit now and salvage what's left of your dignity.  Stop trying to prove that you're smart to a bunch of Nukes.  We've spent the past two years arguing with other Nukes in an attempt to prove that we're smarter than each other and we're very good at arguing.  You won't win, trust me."

Most Nukes (most, not all) don't mean to act snobbish intentionally.  Much of the snobbery is largely due to the fact that we spend those two years of training being programmed by our instructors and superiors (who are also Nukes) to believe that we're really super smart and genius and awesome, before we ever see the Fleet.  In our minds, it's perfectly normal to be an E-4 or E-5 after only two years because that's all we've been exposed to.  Therefore in Nuke World, if you've been in the Navy for eleven years and you're only an E-5 (like this girl was), you must be some kind of stupid.

I digress.  The gist of what I learned during my first week out in the Fleet is:

Nukes have it good.  Really good.  We also apparently work a lot harder and get shit on more than most other rates; but we get paid more.  A lot more.

I learned that the general opinion of non-Nuke types towards Nuke types seems to be a mixture of bitterness, respect, envy, admiration and hatred.  Respect and admiration from the ones who know what we go through, because we go through a million times more bullshit than anyone else does to get out to the Fleet in the first place.  Except for the Seals.

Bitterness, hatred and envy from come from others who think we "have everything handed to us and we don't even have to work hard for it."  Yes, some punk-ass Seaman Recruit Nobody actually had the gall to say that to me earlier this week.  To which I calmly replied while shooting eyeball daggers at him, "Oh. Really?  And you know this how?  Did they teach you that in your A School, right after they taught you how to chip paint?  You should shut the fuck up when you don't know what you're talking about, especially since I don't see any crows on your collar."

I was pissed.  Don't you dare tell me that I didn't work for my crow when you have no idea what I've gone through for the past two years, and especially not when I outrank you.  Pfffffft.  The little shit looked pissed but didn't know what to say, instead he just turned bright red and walked away silently looking angry and shamed.

Anyways.

I'll be spending the next two weeks going through something called School Of Ship, which basically sounds boring as hell.  The impression I got was that we'll be sitting through a bunch of briefs that will teach us important things like How To Not  Be Stupid When Out Drinking, Payday Loans Are Bad, Don't Sexually Harass People, If You Feel Like Killing Yourself Seek Help Instead and other idiotic briefs and lectures that I've sat through multiple times and could repeat from memory.  Also, we'll be doing our basic Damage Control qualifications so that we don't have to waste time doing them later on (when we'll have more important stuff to worry about finishing than something as stupid as DC quals).

Lame.  Also lame... I haven't even seen the freaking ship yet.

Since it's in a drydock, it's impossible to see unless you're in the shipyard standing right next to it; and since they haven't given us our shipyard badges yet, going to go look at it isn't even a viable option.  Blah.

In retrospect, Week One was boring, irritating and sooooooo not an adventure.  Disappointing. ♦