Thanks for the advice! I'm not completely sold on being a Pilot, just weighing my options. Between nuke, CT, and everything else, I'm a little more than lost.
DO NOT go nuke for the sole purpose of trying to get commissioned. Thats the oldest lie in the nuke recruiters book. Is there some truth to the numbers they spout? Yes. BUT the numbers are severely skewed. The problem is, that the numbers ARE true.
Confused? Let me explain. Its a matter of bell curves.
You take a really smart guy, put him in a group of really hard working normal guys, and he works hard. He tests well, performs well, everything. But what really sets him apart is that he tests REALLY well. So when he's put on paper against his peers, he's a far right outlier on the curve.
Then, you take the same really smart guy, put him in a group of other really smart guys, put them in a purely academic situation for two years, and then teach them all to have similar work ethics. Where is the guy now? He's still on the far right of the curve, except the curve has been DRASTICALLY shifted to the right.
So who looks like the more stand out candidate to a selection board? They're both intellectually in the same place, except one sticks out MORE against his peers. And I'm not rate bashing here by any means, which brings me to my next point.
You're looking for other options, because you want time in service and a paycheck, and bennies and all that. Which is great, there's no shame in that. But I also get the impression that you're looking at it because you're not too enthused about being in the class room. Well guess what?
Let me give you a glimpse down this path...
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You're going to spend a solid year in a classroom in the nuke pipeline before you get to anything that even remotely resembles an engine room. If you're lucky. And in that first year in the classroom, you're going to be pushed mentally so far that you couldn't even fathom right now. I'm not saying its impossible subject matter to learn, because its not. Is some of it hard? Yes. But not impossible, and they build a foundation before they start throwing the abstract stuff at you. But its not the subject matter that'll get you. I know plenty of people that haven't made it through this program that were vastly more intelligent than myself. What gets you is the pace. In "A" School, at one point you're taking two classes a day. Not so bad right? Wrong. In those two classes, you'll spend nine hours in the classroom, cover 80+ pages of notes, and then get a couple hours of homework (which you can't take out of the building) thrown on top of it.
But then the notes slow down, as the material gets more complex, but you're still covering more notes in a day than a college student covers in a week at 18 hours a semester (I would know, I've been there.) And then you hit Power School. Welcome to the dark side. You think its going to get easier, but you're wrong. Because now, instead of one class a day at a breakneck pace, you're covering three classes a day. You'll start with Trig, and Physics, and Heat Transfer. Then Trig ends an gets replaced with Your in Rate knowledge requirements. Then Physics ends and gets replaced by Reactor Principles (Reactor Physics) where you'll learn more about crap you can't see than you've ever wanted to know. Then finally Heat transfer and fluid flow ends, and gets replaced by Chemistry, Radiological fundamentals and metallurgy. 6 Months, 9 subjects, 3 classes a day. You're still covering 75+ pages of notes a day, you're still getting a crap ton of homework. if you're really hot shit, you've learned the tricks to get homework done quickly without violating your integrity and you only spent 10 (usually consecutive) hours a day in the building.
so you've made it through Power School. You're hot shit, right? No. You STILL don't have anything better than a student NEC. so now its on to prototype. You've come a long way if you've made it this far. You've learned to cram like no other, memorize countless pages of seemingly useless information and repeat it back verbatim on demand, and hopefully learned some time management skills. these are all great skills, but they were all just a build up to prepare you for prototype. The first 7 weeks of prototype aren't that bad. Its all in the classroom. Except its not a normal classroom. sure, you'll have an instructor for a couple horus a day that'll come in and give a lecture (did I mention that all those days and hours back in power school and A school were mostly lecture based and non interactive? You'll learn to mainline caffeine quickly enough if you want to survive.), but for the most part, its open study hall. What do i mean? I mean, between the books you're issued, and the gigantic technical library at your disposal, you have tech manuals (operations, maintenance and technical specifications) of every single system and component that makes up the training platform you're trying to qualify on. For cross-rate knowledge, they expect you to know all the specs for the SYSTEM, how the system works, and how it ties in to all the other systems. For in Rate knowledge, they want all of that, PLUS they expect you to know the technical specs construction and operation of every COMPONENT in the system. (Example: I've been out of training for 3.5 months now. Haven't stepped foot in the library, been on the computer, or to the boat in any of that time, yet I can still list every load on every breaker on every switchboard in the engineroom, plus the location and type of equipment, where its operating station is, its technical specs, and how a loss of one switchboard affects all that machinery plus the rest of the boat)
So you think you know all there is that you're required to know about something, good right? WRONG. Now you have to track down an instructor who is qualified to sample your knowledge on the subject, and convince him that its worth his time to sit down and listen to you ramble about the same thing 180 students before you rambled about. You get to do this an astounding 78 times before you're done with all your systems and in rate knowledge. And did I mention that for those 180 students in their first seven weeks, there's MAYBE 40 instructors available to them to get these knowledge checks from? You do the math.
Then you get to Crew. Welcome to rotating shift work. 12 Hour a day, 7 on 2 off shift work. Now, the fun really starts. This is the part where you get to prove that you can take all that paper-brain-mouth/paper that you've done over the past year and two months, and make your body do the brain-hand thing. And at first its not as easy as you thought it would be. Now you're standing watch on an actual operating nuclear reactor. And no matter what watch it is, you have the potential to SERIOUSLY fuck shit up. Fortunately, there's a staff member never more than an arms length from you at all times. So when you fuck up, they go to mast, not you. But how are you standing watch if you don't know what to do? You know what everything is, and how its supposed to work, but you don't know how to actually use it right? Wrong. While you're doing all this, you're still learning every casualty for every watchstation on the boat, whether you're qualified to stand it or not, because even if you're not THAT GUY, its your responsibility to back him up when he doesn't know 100%, and stop him when he's about to goof up. When you're done with those checkouts, you get to find a senior qualified staff member on your crew, and convince them that you know how it works, how its built, how to work it, how it affects the rest of the boat, and what to do when everything goes to hell.
Almost done right? Right. Finally. Getting there. You've been at prototype for 5 months, you know how to stand your watches without breaking the boat, you can sit in a cube with more junior students and ramble off procedures and specs all day, and you're finally ready to qualify. So you take the comprehensive exam. This is a COMP like you've never seen before. Its detailed, they're nitpicky, and whats more, anything you've learned from ALL THREE schools over the past two years is fair game. You pass comp, you get your final checkouts done, your ready for your qualification board. For your qualification board, you go into a room, and there's two people there not from your crew ready to tear your brain to pieces looking for minuscule details. One is a civilian, he's your worst enemy. The other is an enlisted staff member of your rate. He's worse than your worst enemy. He won't talk much. His job is to sit there and annotate in detail every little mistake you make on your in rate knowledge and then ask you about it later. The more he speaks, the worse your doing and the longer your board takes. The longer your board takes, the more time you have to screw something up, so the longer they keep asking you questions. Its the ultimate mind fuck. So they give you the inital conditions of the plant, and ask you a couple questions to make sure you know whats going on.
Then, they then say "You're steaming at XXX and X event occurs." You look at them, expecting a question. There is no question. They look at you like WTF why aren't you talking? you take the hint. you spend the next 45min if you're on top of your game explaining every little thing that happens on the boat when X event occurs. You go over every action that every watchstander has to take and you have to know WHY. You have to cite the procedure, but you can't look at the procedure. This isn't a big deal, because you have them all memorized at this point. Additionally, you have to go off on every tangent that you can think of that is topically relevant because the more you speak the less they ask.
Then you're qualified. They give you a list of every topic you need to upgrade yourself on and send you on your way. You go get upgraded on that knowledge, and then get your qualified student sticker. The next day, you come in to work and you're on the watchbill... without a staff member. Hope you weren't just cramming and actually know your shit, because now, it IS your crow on the line.
One thing I forgot to mention is that in Power School expect a minimum of one test a week, usually two.
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Wow, that was a lot. But it was for good cause. You see, if you look at how long I've been a member here, you'll see that I joined here before I joined the navy. I had the same idea you had. I'd enlist, be a nuke because it was the hardest program, thought I could shine, become a pilot. What I just explained to you was what I learned going through the pipeline. If I had to go back and make that choice again, would I still do it? Yes. But NOT beacuse I want to be a pilot. I wantED to be a pilot. Somewhere down the line, I actually fell in love with this shit and really enjoy it. But I would not do it to become a pilot. It was teh hardest two years of my life. But it was rewarding.
And let me tell you something, I was shit hot in high school, and I was shit hot in college (at first) but here, my 1480 on the OLD SAT, my 99ASVAB, I'm still just another duck in the pond. I excelled at prototype because I did the brain-hands thing better than most, and worked my ass off to get the paper-brain-paper thing down.
But seriously, LOOK AT ALL OF THAT! and you're not going to get picked up out of A school, because you're worse than a NUB there, you're just a striker. You couldn't even theoretically do a job yet. You're not likely going to get picked up IN power school because you're just a rated third class with no knowledge of the plant yet. Once you get to prototype, you can more easily get picked up because you GRADUATED from power school at the top of your class and you're doing well in prototype. Then you get to the fleet, and nothing you've done matters anymore. Not your grades, nothing. All that matters is your qualifications at sea, so you gotta start working your way back up the ladder again.
That's a long year and a half plus transfer and time on hold waiting for power school and prototype to start, so you're more realistically looking at two years. All that time that you could have been working on a degree, and all you have is a nuclear NEC and a bunch of fake credits most real colleges won't take. AND THE KICKER IS, BECAUSE YOU'RE A NUKE STUDENT AND THE 4 STAR THAT CONTROLS THE PIPELINE SAID SO, YOU WEREN'T ALLOWED TO TAKE ANY COLLEGE CLASSES WHILE YOU WERE A STUDENT IN THE PIPELINE.
This is a great program, if its what you're looking for, but it quickly becomes a close knit community, and there is definitely no fastrack to a commission here. There are paths to a commission here certainly, but they aren't fast, and you must be found wanting first.
All in all, don't go nuke if you're trying to be a pilot. And don't go nuke if being in a classroom is boring, because this place is like no other animal on the planet when you mix the pace and intensity (remember, you're not just a student, you still have to deal with that whole being in the navy thing too. like BS inspections and mando PT and duty days, etc.) with the actual subject matter.
Really, for anyone reading this, this should serve as a counterbalance to everything a recruiter tells you about how "you'll make E-4 faster than anyone else" and "nukes get picked up officers all the time" and you get these "huge bonuses" stories. Those things are all true, to an extend, and while the numbers they show you aren't lies, numbers out of context don't exactly convey their true meaning.
Oh, and I knew four guys in my A school class that said they did it because they wanted a challenge. Three of them made it out of A school, One of them made it out of power school, the other guy failed out of prototype. "A good challenge" , or any external motivator for that matter isn't enough to get you through. If you're not internally motivated, you're doomed to fail.
Go be a CT. Learning a new language is a challenge. And they get E-4 out of A school too, and they get big bonuses, and their pipeline is much shorter, and you get a TS clearance you can make more than a nuke with when you get out. Its everything you want, without the hassle of being a nuke, and we don't have to deal with you wasting two years of peoples lives and countless sums of money just for you to turn around and try to commission out of the program entirely.
Better yet, listen to everyone before me, and just suck it up, go to college for three years, and do it the easy way.
