u/Expensive_Focus_2897

As someone who’s wrapping up the initial training pipeline, I just wanted to share my navy experience so far. In no way am I trying to act like I know the first thing about the navy, but I want to express my gratitude and overall appreciation for what the navy has done for me.
Remembering the night of arrival at Great Lakes, I showed up scared, broke, but also excited for this new journey. My time at RTC was most definitely challenging mentally and sometimes physically. I definitely fell victim to counting the days instead of making the days count (don’t we all). But I learned a lot to say the least.
I spent some time in FFG (future fleet group) after graduation and that was also tough mentally, still sleeping in a compartment, but it was easy mindless work.
I went to NAS Meridian for A school, worked hard, asked lots of questions, made sure my room and uniform were up to standard at all times, and was able to walk out of there with a recommendation to get mapped to third class (at my first command’s discretion). I went out of my way to connect with some of the senior enlisted at the schoolhouse and they were more than happy to mentor me and guide me in the right direction with little tips and tricks to succeed in the fleet.
Went to C school after that to get my first NEC. Same story as A school, but had the privilege of being in class with people in my rate with 10-15 years+ of experience. As it turns out, going in with the mindset of “I want to learn” rather than “I want to pass” has served me so well thus far.
In addition to all that, I’ve been very financially stable and taken advantage of learning from the mistakes of the people before me.
I’m not saying i’m incredibly happy or content on a day-to-day basis, but I wrote this post to really zoom out and look at the bigger picture of all this. I’m sure people will reply to this saying I haven’t seen anything yet and life’s gonna suck, and that’s ok! I just wanted to share this for me, because it’s SO easy to complain about the little things that go on, but the navy has been what i’ve made of it so far, and I’m hoping it stays that way. If anyone else has any words of advice/encouragement/questions please feel free to reply!
Also sorry if this is kind of a sh*tpost lol I felt good writing it.