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Taking Advantage of Primary Wait Times

Chairman4Life

Chairman4Life

Well-Known Member
Contributor
I'm sure I'll get a few, "you should be drinking beer and sitting on the beach" comments, but I thought I'd ask anyway. The OHARP, Water Survival, IFS, API and Primary pool wait times are long and only getting longer (over a year combined so far). With this time I've been able to finish my Master's Degree and we are being told we still have two or three months more before Primary. I'm thinking about starting the Officer PPME, but not sure if there is any benefit in it at all. Are there any other types of online PME, courses, or certifications out there open for O-1's that we could be knocking out now?
 
Chairman4Life said:
I'm sure I'll get a few, "you should be drinking beer and sitting on the beach" comments, but I thought I'd ask anyway. The OHARP, Water Survival, IFS, API and Primary pool wait times are long and only getting longer (over a year combined so far). With this time I've been able to finish my Master's Degree and we are being told we still have two or three months more before Primary. I'm thinking about starting the Officer PPME, but not sure if there is any benefit in it at all. Are there any other types of online PME, courses, or certifications out there open for O-1's that we could be knocking out now?
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Read the posts. This gets asked ALL THE F-ING TIME.
 
There aren’t really any PME options for O-1s or O-2s, nothing worthwhile anyway. That’s why you didn’t find any in the search. If do you find something on NKO/e-learning/MyNavyPortal/whateverit’scallednow then it’s probably a waste of your time.

If you’ve finished a masters (congratulations and nice job) and you feel so strongly compelled to pursue another goal instead of going to the beach or the bar, then do something like volunteer somewhere, take up triathlons, join the gliding club, or find some other pursuit that is not related to the military...
 
Concur with the above if you are bored with drinking and beaches...find a club/hobby/volunteer organization that you have interest in and take advantage of the ability to pour some time into it now. Once you get going you're going to have little control of your personal time.
 
Jim123 said:
There aren’t really any PME options for O-1s or O-2s, nothing worthwhile anyway.
Click to expand...

Any idea why that is? I mean is it that important to be an O-3 to do whatever the PME is that O-3s do now? I never bothered to really look at what he was doing, but one of the LT HACs during my HAC-in-the-rack, I mean "A-OIC," cruise was doing some PME that he said was apparently required at the time for O-3s. Given his penchant for playing Halo instead of doing Det MO stuff, I got the impression he wasn't doing it voluntarily, but maybe I'm wrong.
 
Chairman4Life said:
Rufio! I honestly did put forth a good search effort....?
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Rufio angry!!! ?

Concur with the others. There’s so much to read, both from a personal and professional perspective. What I wouldn't give to have the luxury to do all that reading now. Likewise, work out a lot and be in good shape. These are two things that will have a lasting impact on your life. Take day trips to interesting places, and road trip on free weekends. Yes, by all means, get drunk and enjoy yourself. Moderation in all things... including moderation.
 
Jim123 said:
There aren’t really any PME options for O-1s or O-2s, nothing worthwhile anyway. That’s why you didn’t find any in the search. If do you find something on NKO/e-learning/MyNavyPortal/whateverit’scallednow then it’s probably a waste of your time.

If you’ve finished a masters (congratulations and nice job) and you feel so strongly compelled to pursue another goal instead of going to the beach or the bar, then do something like volunteer somewhere, take up triathlons, join the gliding club, or find some other pursuit that is not related to the military...
Click to expand...

Good advice. My experience is 15 years old now, but I was bored stiff with the wait. I ended up volunteering with Habitat for Humanity and spent my weekdays building houses. Which was fortunate because two hurricanes hit Pensacola during my stay, so I was able to meaningfully contribute to the recovery effort (I actually fell in love with roofing for some strange reason). HH gave me an award and reported it to my command. Didn’t at all impact my career, but nice to be able to contribute.

Not all of us are wired for the beer and beach lifestyle. It’s okay. That said, it’ll be the last time you have free time like that.
 
All great ideas in here for when you get tired of the beach and beer. Volunteering, be it at HH, a school, the museum, etc; are all great options. Club sports or triathlons/marathons/etc are great to get a social group beyond A-pool. Plenty of ways to learn new skills or perfect existing ones.

If I had that much spare time again I'd probably do something like this:
-find a volunteer activity to give back. plenty of youth activities can always use help
-find an activity/sport to get me outside with a group of folks. for me that might be golf, shooting, fishing, archery, hiking, paddling
-make a book list and work my way through it. there are plenty of "best of lists" online to help start your own personal list
-find a hobby and participate in a group. model building, carving, gardening (i'd probably go get my master gardener cert because why the hell not?)
-maybe some sort of other activity if it's your thing. theater. choral society. county orchestra. garage band.
-take cooking courses
-get a fun job. roofing? landscape design? driving a forklift*, carpentry

*a friend of mine was walking down the waterfront at 32nd street while in his CO pipeline. He hears someone call his name. Looks around and sees that it's a forklift driver. Realizes that the forklift driver is his former CO from his first tour who went on to make some flavor of SOW O-6. My bud says, "CAPT X, what are you doing here?!" CAPT(ret) X says, "I retired but then got bored and the Mrs told me I couldn't mope around all day. So this looked like fun. Turns out it is."
 
Go TAD somewhere or take OCONUS leave. Get the hell out of Milton and go find a squadron willing to take you in. Best decision I ever made in my wait time was to go do these two things.
 
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