I hear the 1st Lt job on an FFG is really freaking cool though.
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Really stupid questions about life as a SWO and anything else not aviation related [mod dog wuz hərə]
- Thread starter Wiley
- Start date
FIFY
It certainly makes every other job you'll ever have in the Navy seem awesome by comparison.
Better than an LCS though? I seem to remember something form the survey about JO's overwhelmingly not wanting to serve on them.
Too soon to tell. There's something to be said for taking orders to a small, fast, highly maneuverable, brand new ship that crew swaps off hull every 4 months. They also have a fantastic training pipeline. It's not perfect, I'll stick with a bigger, better armored DDG (and it's 100+ missiles). But I'll take either over a Frigate any day of the week.
exNavyOffRec
Well-Known Member
When I would go on the recruiting trips they would take people on tours of various ships, LCS's were avoided due to certain reasons.
If you stay in, the Navy will send you to God's gift to humanity (Monterey) for 2 years and pay you six figure pay check to work on your M.A. as a full time job. If you get out, you will likely have 100% GI bill to get your degree full time as a civilian. I don't know that the advantage of doing it on sea duty is; I do, however, see many disadvantages of such a decision. That said, I've known 2-3 people that managed to suffer through it- depends a lot on your family situation. I'd wait until you have a SWO pin to start.
From what I've seen, SWOs have more time built into their career to allow in residence NWC or PGS than Aviators. Function of the length, or lack thereof, of the training pipeline in the respective designators.
Your first sea tour FITREP will be based on your time to qual, job performance, and collateral duties. The MA is not going to help on your hard breakout at the end of your tour, but it could hurt if you impact your job getting said degree.
Concentrate on the job you are getting paid to do first, then worry about the other stuff on sea tour (not to mention your husband) and get yours back on shore duty.
Pickle
Your first sea tour FITREP will be based on your time to qual, job performance, and collateral duties. The MA is not going to help on your hard breakout at the end of your tour, but it could hurt if you impact your job getting said degree.
Concentrate on the job you are getting paid to do first, then worry about the other stuff on sea tour (not to mention your husband) and get yours back on shore duty.
Pickle
Great point. As a SWO, those ENS and LTJG reports really do matter, can go into more detail, but the point is, if you want to stay past 4 yrs, you want to knock it out of the park in those Divo tours. You only get 24 hours a day. Keeping a healthy marriage, being a great SWO, AND getting a masters is bad math.
Like Pickle said, a full-ride Masters is built into the SWO career path, so you're really shooting yourself in the foot if you do it on your own time.
Does it really matter in the big picture?
When I went to OCS we picked our ships during week 10 or so. A list of the ships was given to us, and it had their homeports listed as well. In my class we got together and talked about it first, then when the time came there weren't any surprises. Not everyone got what they wanted, but that's life.
I think for your first tour the platform doesn't really matter, except for minesweepers. I would stay as far away from those as possible.
enlUSMC
It's SWOtastic
Thanks, it's just important to me that I get my family back to SD. Do you remember the available allotments proportionally for the duty stations?