ET3 ME!

So... as you have all heard... I received word today that I passed my advancement exam. Funniest part about it was that when my captain mentioned it he called me ET2, which would mean that i skipped a pay-grade and went up two ranks. I'm fairly certain it was a type-o on his sheet though unfortunately. The ships office isn't flawless, though i must say they are some of the coolest people.

So.. this means i get a chevron... instead of three stripes. This is cool because the three stripes do not show on most uniforms, your sleeves and collars are just blank. But now I have to put a chevron on every collar and sleeve where applicable. Feels kinda nice.

K mentioned that the rate of advancement was very low navy-wide which is true. However, for my particular rate.... its very high... in fact they need us pretty bad right now so it was kind of a shoe-in to be honest. I'm not berating myself at all - just keepin' it real. I will be elegible for the next rating exam in about a year to move up in rank again.

This time i might not be so lucky. The chances of going from E3-E4 (what I just did) is very high for my rate. The chances of going from E4-E5 (the next advancement) is very low. Just the way the math works out with my particular rate. Rest assured, when the times comes I will prepare and do the best I can.

For now though, I have indoctrination tomorrow morning... among a bunch of other qualification meetings i arranged to do - BTW, I'm one month ahead right now. Once we have gone through the indoctrination meeting they will arrange for us to get frocked. Frocked is a term used when the person being "frocked" is wearing their new rank, and regarded at their new rank but are not yet getting paid for that rank. The pay follows it by about six months depending on your percentile score. I do not yet know what mine was.

So, third class petty officer... In submarines, with my rate... something is wrong if you didn't make this rank. So it doesn't really change much for me. This rank is honestly not treated with any more respect than my previous rank - not in every day communications anyway. I have some stories as to this relationship that i will not go into here. Just ask me in person about the hydrogen peroxide argument.

Even so, this is one step closer to success here. Presently I have 103/1013 points on my ship's qualification card. I Have about 28 points lined up in checkouts this week so by the time my card starts getting counted... i should be about 5 weeks ahead of schedule. And we get the boat in the near future too. Once we have the boat I will actually be able to see all the equipment I'm learning about and progress much faster.

Once I am qualified Submarines... its one to PACE courses... i can't remember what it stands for but its college credits. I'm going to do as many of these as i can during my time in the navy so that I will be closer and closer to my degree... which is still up in the air.