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Congratulations to her and to your family!
The college tour redux
- Thread starter Nords
- Start date
OK - I get the picture with the lei and robe, but what are you doing to her uniform sleeves
We in the Air Force pin it on our shoulders - are you pinning a stripe on her sleeve? ( I have my requisite pic of my Dad doing that too many years ago (he also pinned on my eagles a few years ago ))
From a fellow armed services member who has done joint duty and yet is still confused about the other services' traditions....
Great pics, by the way and the European tour will be fun....when she has free time - heh - not much of that to go around when on active duty in the military
Like the informal Hawaii clothes styles of Mom and Dad, too....definitely the retired approach and I suspect those clothes are the dressiest you have and have worn in awhile ;-)
We in the Air Force pin it on our shoulders - are you pinning a stripe on her sleeve? ( I have my requisite pic of my Dad doing that too many years ago (he also pinned on my eagles a few years ago ))From a fellow armed services member who has done joint duty and yet is still confused about the other services' traditions....
Great pics, by the way and the European tour will be fun....when she has free time - heh - not much of that to go around when on active duty in the military
Like the informal Hawaii clothes styles of Mom and Dad, too....definitely the retired approach and I suspect those clothes are the dressiest you have and have worn in awhile ;-)
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KB
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Congratulations to your DD and her parents.
2soon2tell
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Congrats to Carol and her proud parents.
Go Navy
Go Navy
HawkeyeNFO
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DFW_M5 said:
Seabee is the easy route compared to Surface Nuke. I'm convinced that Surface Nuke is just about the most arduous career field in the USN.
Great to have a "Nords" in the Navy again! Hopefully she can get a chance to take in all the fun stuff in Rota and around the Med. Congrats!
W2R
Moderator Emeritus
Congratulations, Nords, to your daughter and the whole family. 
chris2008
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I can still remember the start of this thread. Thank you for posting the happy ending of this big educational step. I hope your daughter will enjoy Europe and her further career.
Ed_The_Gypsy
Give me a museum and I'll fill it. (Picasso) Give me a forum ...
Wow! Has it been 4 years already?
(and why is Jimmy Buffet standing next to your daughter?)
Sent from my GT-I9100 using Tapatalk 2
(and why is Jimmy Buffet standing next to your daughter?)
Sent from my GT-I9100 using Tapatalk 2
Ronstar
Moderator Emeritus
Congrats! Your daughter has a bright future as an engineer, having a Navy / nuclear background.
ls99
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Splendid accomplishment. Congratulations to your DD. Was fun to read the story of the process.
Bestwifeever
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Your dd will go far in her parents' footsteps--so great that she will be serving her country! She sure has had a lot of virtual support from the er.org community as you've shared her journey over the years.
Congratulations to her and her proud parents.
Congratulations to her and her proud parents.
Hawaii tradition, and she wasn't the only Rice graduate from Hawaii! One lei from each family/friend at the event (plus one from an old high-school friend who couldn't make it). If this ceremony had been on Oahu (or if she'd invited more guests) the lei would've been up to her eyebrows. Spouse spent months tracking down artificial lei in the Rice colors of blue & grey.
I've always been jealous of the Air Force uniform regs, especially when I had to pack a seabag for multiple climates & events. Navy is too hidebound in tradition to streamline its uniforms-- and don't get me started on aquaflage.OK - I get the picture with the lei and robe, but what are you doing to her uniform sleeves
From a fellow armed services member who has done joint duty and yet is still confused about the other services' traditions....
So while the men's Service Dress White uniform has shoulder boards, the women's SDW uniform has its rank sewn on to the sleeves. At commissioning, the women mids wear their SDW jackets (without the anchors on the collars) and put white tape over their sleeves. (It's been like this for over 35 years.) You can see that I was struggling with her engineer's-caliber tape job, but I finally made it tear. My daughter is trying to keep the smirk off her face, but she's deliberately making me laugh...
The ceremony included a retired Air Force brigadier general (a USNA alumnus!) commissioning his grandson, two Marine sergeants pinning on their Marine younger brother's 2LT bars, and a four-year-old boy putting on one of his Dad's shoulder boards. (Dad was commissioned through an enlisted program and was technically an officer candidate, not a midshipman.) The couple sitting in front of us at the ceremony were both retired Navy O-4s surface warfare officers (she was one of the first women officers on sea duty), and they commissioned their daughter into the submarine force. The mother turns out to be a frequent commenter on my blog.
Thanks! "Aloha casual", and Goodwill's finest ($15 for my outfit). Yes, that's as dressy as we get-- I no longer own a jacket or tie. We did a lot of walking that day so I wore shoes instead of rubbah slippahs, but the Houston weather was definitely warming up.
SeaBees was a distant choice after the "combat arms" communities of submarines, surface warfare, and aviation. It's a tough career field to be in during a drawdown, and the funding cuts have been brutal. It's still an option for a lateral transfer after she finishes five years-- or in the extremely unlikely event that she bails out of Nuclear Power School. Since she passed her FE she could also opt for Engineering Duty Officer but... shipyard for the rest of her career?!?
The surface & sub communities both have many ways to make their servicemembers miserable, but the irony of surface nuke is that even if she stays for 20 she may only end up on (at most) two aircraft carriers-- most surface "nukes" do their XO/CO tours on conventional ships. It'll be interesting to see if BUPERS tries to nudge her back toward submarines in 2016 when she's at NPS. They'll need more women on subs, and sending a warfare-qualified LTJG (who already has her SSBN boomer pin) to a sub after NPS would guarantee that she'd succeed. Assuming that she prefers subs to DDGs...
The advantage of being in a forward-deployed homeport like Rota (or Yokosuka or Manama) is getting all the fuel & ordnance they want. Rumor is that the operating cycle is four months at homeport (with weekly underways) followed by four months deployed to the Med (or North Atlantic, or... Black Sea). It also offers plenty of operational opportunities to get qualified in record time, unlike being in a U.S. homeport.
Once she's wearing her SWO pin (~15-18 months) then she'll have a chance to think about liberty!
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fisherman
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Congratulations!!!! Very Proud moment for your family.
The Navy does a good job of making the opportunity available with tuition assistance and online classes, but she won't have the time. Her main job for this tour (21 months) is to qualify as a Surface Warfare Officer-- and get as much tactical experience as she can at Officer of the Deck and Tactical Action Officer.
After that she has a year of Nuclear Power School, which is rumored to be the equivalent of 24 credit hours. (It's not on any of my academic transcripts!) Then she'll spend two years in the engineering department aboard an aircraft carrier, where it'll all be Propulsion Plant Watch Officer and engineering training. Not only will she never get to drive that ship, she may not even get up to the bridge and she won't be given access to any of the tactical spaces. While she'll hypothetically have the time on the carrier (evenings & weekends) for graduate school, I don't think it'll be a priority. (I know I wouldn't have made the time.) If she gets a carrier out of Yokosuka then she'll have far better things to do with her liberty.
After the carrier tour she can leave active duty or stick around for another tour. If she opts to stick around then she'll rotate to shore duty, and that would have the best shot at a graduate degree. If she does it on the Navy's time (at Naval Postgraduate School, mostly her choice of degree) then she'll owe a payback tour of 3-4 more years afterward. She could do it as part of a tour at the U.S. Naval Academy (they pick the degree) but I don't know if that still requires a follow-on sea tour. She could also do it on her own (nights & weekends) with the Navy's tuition assistance and only minimal additional obligated time for the TA.
If she leaves active duty then she'll still have the GI Bill. If she gets a job with an engineering firm then they'd probably pay for her degree-- especially if she does it in Texas (her new state of residence) or Hawaii. She's seen a lot of military officers & veterans go through the Rice University MBA program (they help out at the NROTC unit) but maybe she'll prefer to get her PE first.
She knows what she needs to do to reach financial independence, so a MS might not be part of her plans at all. It all depends on what she enjoys doing and how high she can boost her savings rate!
Moemg
Gone but not forgotten
Congratulations ! You must be so proud of her !
clifp
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Having meet Carol several times, I can say she is one impressive young woman, and I'm sure she'll be a outstanding naval officer.
Give my congratulations to her.
Give my congratulations to her.
I imagine we are all proud of her.
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