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The chow hall was different in Pensacola since it was just for OCS, but the DIs didn't mess with us too much while we were actually eating (before and after, different story), and they did make sure we actually ate. My complaint about the food in Pcola was that it was terrible for you--high...

Wait, what? A kinder, gentler Navy, indeed. Truly a "Global Force for Good." It's all political correctness run amok. I understand the reasoning behind it, I do, but if you're too sensitive to be called names during your military accession program, you're probably also too sensitive to get...

Both. In general, they like to have people with some experience in those jobs, and on the specwar side in particular, it's all about networking and finding out about billets through word of mouth. That's not to say it can't happen, since a couple of people from my class did get assigned to...

Yes, you also list the type of duty you would prefer. Then the detailer tries to line up your priorities with what's available. Of course, sometimes an entire class just ends up at ONI. It all depends.

I'm pleased to see someone currently going through NIOBC posting here. I went through 5+ years ago, so although I'm happy to answer questions, I know my gouge might be a little out of date. Scaevola (and others), one thing I would add is that NIOBC is as long as it is in part so that...

Thank God they're still bear crawling. It's easy once you figure out the trick, and was an integral part of OCS for my class (and I'm sure for many others). I'm guessing they can't afford the ammo to have everyone actually qual on the M9, but I wouldn't know. The only "weapon" we touched...

Concur that Newport is your best bet. There aren't many (any, actually, that I know of) of us intel weenies in the northeast outside of the Naval War College. If someone in your CoC knows an officer who lat transferred from the nuke community, that would be one lead. I'd be careful with that...

All true. "Study what you want" is bad advice if it's going to lead to a degree in something useless (I'm also from the Boston area, and know plenty of people in that exact boat--or else, ten years out of undergrad, they've finished their PhDs and are now trying to find jobs as professors in...

Fair enough; I stand corrected. I shouldn't have implied your degree locks you into a narrow field, and certainly it's good advice in general to get a technical degree--it's just not good advice for someone who doesn't want one and would do better in another field. There's a balance between a...

I think the other thing to keep in mind is that if your dream is to be a naval aviator and you go for the engineering (or whatever) degree you don't enjoy because you think it's going to help, and then get NPQ'd and even intel won't take you, you're basically stuck doing what you got your degree...

A few things: Study the gouge while you're applying/waiting to hear... it's not a secret what you have to memorize, and there's no reason anyone should be looking at it for the first time after getting a final select letter, or showing up at OCS. Get in shape. Beyond that, don't have any...

I think we're saying essentially the same thing. Majoring in something you're not passionate about in order to get a job may be the way to go... but when the goal is a degree in order to meet commissioning requirements, there's some flexibility. Speaking for myself, I could have majored in...

Your point is well taken, but at the same time, it's not really fair to tell a high school senior to decide what he's going to want to do ten years from now (or more). I think the key is to strike a balance between something you're interested in, and something that will help you get a job down...

OCS... Pensacola... June-August. You could practically chew on the air during PT.

Heck yeah. Loved my summer whites. Also, Pensacola has way better beaches.

Nice photos, though as a Rhode Islander who went through OCS in Pensacola, I'll just go ahead and point out that Pensacola summers can be just about as brutal as Newport winters.

No one's going to be malnourished. I don't know how it is in Newport, but in Pensacola all the food was pretty high in calories (deep-fried Southern cuisine), and they're going to give you ample chances to hydrate (and yes, they'll give you appropriate chances to make a head call). If you're...

I'm not sweating the fact of cuts in defense spending. That's inevitable, and should be manageable. What's frustrating is that there seems to be no effort to figure out where the cuts need to happen--this current crisis du jour is pretty much entirely self-imposed, and everyone involved...

Shouldn't this whole sequestration discussion be under the "failure of leadership" thread? Regardless of the effects/actual amount of spending being cut, it's an embarrassment. "Washington," broadly speaking, is refusing to do its job, which is to govern.

I think the frustration comes from the fact that we have all this training, and all the things you brought up still keep happening. Throwing more identical training at the problem clearly isn't fixing it (isn't the definition of insanity doing the same thing over and over again and expecting...

That's exactly the way I describe my time at OCS. Congratulations!

I believe they lose sleep (I'd say hope, but losing sleep sucks; I don't wish that on people). I've been known to lose sleep over my sailors and the decisions I make that affect them, and maybe I was wrong to imply that that universally disappears after a certain promotion board. Senior...

I see a lot of senior leadership getting brilliant ideas, chasing the shiny object of the week, and wasting my time--and my sailors' time--with asinine shit. It's frustrating. Now, I'm well aware I'm a junior LT, and that sometimes I do need to shut up and color, as the solutions to the...

Congrats! As far as I know you should be good with the pro rec, assuming no issues with medical/PFA. I'm not sure what you mean about the clearance. You will need SCI to be an intel weenie, so just make sure you are talking with your SSO and getting all the requisite paperwork done.

It's not an all-day event. There's a run, a breakfast, parade, then the commissioning ceremony and first salutes. It wraps up before lunch. That was in Pensacola, but I can't imagine it's that much different in Newport. If I remember correctly, a few people in my class had family members...

If having to abide by the UCMJ changes your life in any real way, you might want to rethink the whole "being a naval officer" thing. Once you swear in, you're in--you'll be in the USNR until you commission and are on active duty.

Don't spend money on getting a short haircut before you go. No matter how short it is, they will find some more to cut off.

If they haven't switched things up since '07, you'll get your hair cut short enough that there's no need for a hair dryer.

I'm guessing women get out earlier because it's harder for women to maintain a normal family life than for men. How many civilian guys want to be Navy husbands? How many moms want to deploy while Dad stays home with the kids? Aviation has a long training pipeline, too, but I think at this...

To the OP, I wouldn't say you "jumped ship" in the face of adversity. To me, that would suggest dropping out, or transferring somewhere else, which is the opposite of what you did. The way I read your post, you did what you had to do to finish what you started with minimal compromise of your...

CTF-67 has a 2nd/3rd tour intel O-3 right now. COMNAVEUR and JAC Molesworth (Italy and England) have some billets for 2nd tour O-2/O-3 types. Same goes for EUCOM HQ in Stuttgart. As far as I know, there aren't any intel billets in Rota for officers. Not too many O-1 intel billets in Europe...

No, you didn't, and you're right that there don't have to be any pregnancies. Plenty of women deploy and don't get pregnant--I'd say the vast majority--but it's like anything else in the military where the actions of a couple of idiots have a disproportionate effect on everyone else. My point...

^This. Go with your classmates, even if you're not religious. I don't know how it is in Newport, but in Pensacola the entire class went to the community center near the chapel on Sunday mornings and sat around, relaxed, ate donuts, called our families, and went to our respective services if we...

It's naive to assume that no one's going to get pregnant on a sub. It happens at every single other operational command in the Navy, and while it's nice to think that submariners are that much more mission focused, they aren't. Smart people do dumb things all the time, even when they have...

Who said that?

...So when I was doing my pre-deployment training at Ft. Jackson, SC, before I went to Afghanistan, it was an unlawful order when they said we weren't allowed to drink any alcohol while on liberty? As far as MJ, I think DoD will eventually allow it, with certain conditions. I'm not saying it...

Have to say, when you rate your choices by which one you dislike the least, I start wondering why you want to be in the Navy at all. Since you seem to like intel the second least, yes, it's an all right career path. It can even be a fun career path, if you decide you want to be there. Whether...

Keeping experienced people in the military benefits the military for obvious reasons, but I think having a wider pool of people come in and serve for 4-6 years benefits us as well. Too many people don't consider military service as a career option because they don't know anyone who served, and...

It depends on the recruiter and the recruit. It also depends on what designators the Navy wants to fill. If you're applying for a competitive designator with few available spots, it doesn't make sense for your recruiter to put in a lot of effort on your behalf. If you're applying for a...

We've all seen JOs make good points in the wrong forum. Continuously arguing with an O-6 at an all-hands call isn't going to win an O-3 many friends, and most JOs understand that, but in a forum like this one, some of us are at least nominally anonymous, and someone like me who is sarcastic in...

Whether the sentiments in the article are original or not, I think he does raise a fair point: Why have service academies? As plenty of previous posters have mentioned, most of what he has to say is obviously coming from the perspective of someone with zero military service listening to the...

NIOBC is about a month's worth of useful/interesting coursework stretched out over five/months. You will learn most of what you need to know on the job. I'm not knocking NIOBC or the instructors; they are doing their best to give a broad overview of what it means to be in naval intelligence to...

Keep following that dream, but just remember, those same words have been said by plenty of current helo pilots, SWOs, or intel officers, among many others.

Compromise has to happen, and eventually the parties will realize that, suck it up, and come up with a temporary fix. I think the problem is that both parties have become so fixated on the differences that they don't see where they have common ground. It's a lot harder to negotiate when you...

You're talking about the geopolitical repercussions of military involvement, though, and that's different from understanding the military itself. But if we're going down that road, a lot of Democrats favored going into Iraq in 2003. I'm actually not picking a side, though. I am an equal...

Oh, I absolutely agree with that. Like I said, it just plays into the narrative. Also, if they were looking for a badass ship with a bunch of weapons on it, they should have gone with the KIROV CGN. They basically stapled every weapons system in the Soviet arsenal to that one.

True, and I'm glad to see it. Military service isn't the only or most important qualification for national office, but I think that our country can only benefit from having more politicians (and citizens) with that perspective, regardless of political affiliation. I don't know; this seems more...

Yes, but I wouldn't limit it to one political party. I think both parties are becoming increasingly disconnected from the military, which is a natural consequence of fewer Americans (i.e., voters) having military connections. Because of the two wars we've been involved in over the last 10...

Eh, all this does is play into the existing narrative that the Democrats don't understand things military.

Jacks, here's the thing: Pretty much every 17-year-old ever has said something to the effect of "Our love is different, no one understands, this is forever." That's fine; it's part of being 17. That said, picking a college based on proximity to the person you're dating in high school is rarely...