I just finished attending the Southeast Region Junior Officer Training Symposium. Navy Supply Corps is, in my opinion and the opinion of many others, the best community in the Navy if you want a collegial, cooperative and supportive network. I think the reason for this is that many of the Navy's officer communities involve people competing against each other. In Supply Corps, it's not like, say Surface Warfare (the guys who run and command the ships). You're not trying to outperform the other 12 SWOs on the ship so you get a good fitness report and get promoted first. Instead, you're one of very few (or the only) supply officers on the ship. More importantly, you're not generally competing against a bunch of other SUPPOs. (Supply Officers). Instead, you have to cooperate with other SUPPOs for your very survival. Not only that, but pretty much everything you need has to come from another SUPPO. In the Navy, Supply Officers are in charge of supplies, obviously, but they're also in charge of logistics (what the Army would call "transportation"), money (what the Army would call "finance"), as well as a handful of other disciplines.
Because of this, you either play well with others, or you don't do very well. So, although the conference was meant to be an efficient way to disseminate information, it is also genuinely fun to go there and interact with your fellow officers.
One thing I saw here was something I wasn't used to seeing. I have completed all my pork chop (the informal name of supppy officers) training, and have been promoted once. There were a lot of new Ensigns who had just started the training pipeline. It was interesting to see them with the same curiosity and questions I had at that point. Time moves on and although I'm still new-ish, I'm not the newest. Those of us who have gone a few steps did so with the help of others who showed us what to do, and now it's our turn to help those who are not quite as far along.
The most interesting part of these symposia is when they get down to deployment rates. To make a long story short, there are 20 or so deployable supply corps officers who are available to fill individual augmentation billets with the Army. I am in that group. That's not a lot of officers and the demands have slowed down, but there is still a demand for maybe a hundred or so supply officers to deploy with the Army every year.
When we're trained and deployable, we're referred to as a "full up-round", from naval artillery terminology. The Full Up Round is the shell that's in the naval gun and will be shot out, next.
I am clearly a Full Up Round at this point.
I am hoping to not-deploy until late 2011, but right now, I'm wondering if that's going to happen. In late 2011, I should be pretty close to finishing up the 4 Arabic courses I plan to take. I should also have passed my DAWIA Level I certification as well. It also means that I'll deploy as an O-3, instead of an O-2, which involves a considerable sum of money as well as a big jump in prestiege, especially in the Army world.
In all seriousness, the difference between O-2 and O-3 isn't that big in the Navy. In the Navy, officers from O-1 through O-4 are considered "Junior Officers". Navy Officer rank is confusing at first glance, if you come from another service.
However, it makes a lot of sense. All but one of the ranks have the word "lieutenant" in them and it's used in the original context: you act "in lieu of" somebody else. (The other rank, Ensign, is the first rank you get and generally, it's accepted that you know little, if anything.)
Senior officers are Commanders and Captains. Commanders are so named because they "command" and Captain is the historical Naval title for a person who commands a ship.
So, there isn't really the hyper rank-consciousness in the Navy that you see in, for instance, the Army, where the difference between an O-2 and an O-3 is huge. If I deploy with the Army, though, having O-3 will be big.
Right now, the demand for DAWIA certified Navy Officers is so high that I'm pretty sure that once I get Level I, I'm going to get tapped. That should happen sometime in 2011. So, it's not totally out of whack with my timetable.
Which is just a very, very long way for me to say that it's highly likely that I will need to drop my plans and pack my sea-bag sometime in the next year or two.
In the mean time, I'll take all the Arabic I can and finish as much of my DAWIA certifications as I possibly can.
My only real worry is how the deployment will affect my son. Will his mother make the effort to let him continue to play travel baseball? Will he be okay? She does a great job with him, though. I'm not worried about that. I think if she can keep his routine as similar as possible to what it is, today, it won't be that bad. I'll miss out on a year with him, which is awful, but my life has afforded me the ability to spend a lot more time with him than most fathers do. On balance, we're doing okay.
I also am trying to get into a new business which, if successful, will mean I'll probably sell off my old business. So, that's two more things that I have to try and accomplish sometime before the word comes down. I'd like to have the one finished up and the other up and running. Who knows how far I'll get on that.
Travelling was an eye-opener. It was pretty much impossible to adhere to my diet. I can't wait to get back and get back on the diet. I feel a lot better when I'm on it. On the bright side, I increased my running workouts and am starting to tick the speed up ever so slightly. Right now, I'm doing a 5 minute warmup, followed by three full 1-mile repeats, and then a 5 minute cool-down. I'm still embarassed by how slowly I'm running, but there's clear progress. I just need to be patient and stick with it.
For the first time in about 10 years, I am encouraged by the though that I'm on the path to superior physical condition. I've been running every day. I should probably take a day off one of these days, but I'm doing fine and I'm not running that far or fast. Until I can add some other aerobic activity, I will probably keep doing this.
Time to hit the weights again this week. I was able to run every day I was out of town, but time didn't really permit me to do any weight training.
I drill with the Fort Worth unit next month for the first time. A funny thought occurred to me. If I get my Level I in mid 2011, and my level II in mid 2012, that means I really won't be with the unit very long after I have my certifications. I'll be due to rotate out in May of 2013. If I deploy, that'll pretty much be the entire enchilada of time at the Fort Worth unit.
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