What those 5 years look like, on a daily basis.
Some broad strokes, because the paths split many ways...
She will service select Navy or Marine.
If she goes to any school or pipeline training, she lives either in an apartment solo or with others, or in officer dorm at Marine Basic School (TBS). She gets up, puts on uniform, and work for her is her school - duty under instruction. She PTs every day, wears civilian clothes after hours and spends her time learning professional skills needed for her Navy or Marine job. She will have her own time after hours when not in duty or other working status. She will have a social life, a paying job with excellent benefits, and a career path that can take her as far as she wants to dream in her service, or take her much-desired skills to the outside world, where Fortune 500 companies will vie for her - a skilled junior executive ready to slot into their exec development program.
If she goes right to her operational unit, say, a ship, she will step right into the role of a junior white collar supervisor, running her division, and working on her professional warfare qualifications. She will live off the ship, with enough pay and untaxed allowances to live in a nice place. She will go to work on the ship every day, learning to be a surface warfare officer. When the ship goes to sea, she will go with it, and fall into her rack exhausted after a long operational day - but proud and happy with her division and the way they performed, and because she got to see the Green Flash at sunset from the bridge wing of the destroyer she is learning to drive, and in two days, there is a Hong Kong port call and her parents are flying in to meet her. She will eventually have shore duty, a "normal" military office job, and then, back to sea. She will complete her obligated service and decide to stay or go.
There will be good bosses and bad, crazy days, sailors/Marines who will make her smack her forehead with their bonehead actions (which make for great sea stories/war stories years into the future, and form the glue for the lifelong bonds of vets), and sailors/Marines who will make her face ache with pride as they manage the impossible, and she realizes the depth of the honor it is to lead them.
At the house tonight, we had a USNA alumni sponsor daughter, a Marine who left active duty just a few years ago. She got her M.S. in Finance at Georgetown on the Marine dime at night. She immediately found employment at Deloitte as an analyst, via one of the many junior officer placement firms who specialize in putting separating junior officers with the Fortune 500 companies eager to have them. She just got headhunted away from Deloitte by an international financial firm with a major NYC base. They paid to re-locate her, and her mentor is a USNA grad, one of the top executives in the company. She just led a team on a project for two weeks out of the country. She credits USNA, her training as a junior officer to lead, manage, prioritize, analyze, persevere, plan, execute and succeed, all at an age far earlier than most of her peers in age - for her successful transition into an upwardly mobile financial executive track. She will always be a Devil Dawg in her heart.
I am not sure if the family "horror" at USNA is unfamiliarity with the prestige and honor of bring a well-educated junior officer, a stereotype of the military as uneducated and rigid, or "how will she get a job when she gets out if all she knows how to do is work on a ship" syndrome. Time to punt to the thread, "Your son or daughter goes where?!"
If I could go back and be a junior officer all over again, I would do it in a heartbeat. I worked hard, I learned to lead, gained confidence and skill, and yes, there were plenty of bad times/bosses/job moments along the way. I also had a blast, saw amazing things in the far corners of the world. Attended the International Hydrographic Conference aboard USNS WILKES, tied up pier side in Monaco (yes, that one), across the pier from Jacques Yves Cousteau, visiting ships from other nations during a two-week period, taking care of all the logistics for daily visit ship periods, receptions, as well as the unglamorous stuff like fuel, garbage and port issues. Well. That was a good one, as temp assignments for a junior officer went.
If you want to have a fun exercise, and if you are on LinkedIn, do this:
- log in from computer, not phone
- in advanced search, put "Naval Academy" (or any SA) into School, then pick a big company of your choice, say, General Dynamics, and put in Company. Or, USAA, Navy Federal Credit Union, Deloitte, Booz Allen Hamilton, Boeing, Michelin...
- Search. You should see all USNA grads at that company who have a LI profile. I am confident you will see them in executive positions.
I hope this gives some context. Your DD is wise to wonder about what happens after USNA. The good thing is she will get briefs on all kinds of things, talk to senior enlisted, junior and senior officers about their experiences and roles, and use summer training to get up close tastes of what awaits. She will have two full years, and she can walk away, with respectable academic credits in hand, if it's not for her.
If she stays for her service obligation and the required time to get the max benefit, she also walks away with the Post 9/11 GI Bill educational benefits, plus federal VA benefits (no down payment VA mortgage, etc.) and her resident state VA benefits.