Surprisingly Tough Decisions- will attending a service academy ruin my life?

At least on the Marine side, very few will be "staff officers" for their first 2-3 years. More than likely they will go and be platoon commanders. Even as staff officers, they weren't mid level staff clerks. They were planning operations, supporting operations of the battalion. They had Marines were they responsible for and definitely their work was more important than pushing paper. A unit couldn't sustain or operate without their efforts. Sure as an officer, many do much more paperwork than anyone would expect. And yes Ensigns and 2ndLts can and do run things daily. As a 2ndLt I was running a crew and platoon in combat operations. It wasn't like I was running to a Captain to ask "Can I" every 10 seconds.

On the Navy side, it can vary depending on career field. But, seeing my friends experiences they were similar in nature to be a Marine's except running Divisions. Every Junior Officer will also have the infamous collateral billets. These can and are a pain in the butt many times, but its also a chance to stand out in your unit, get to know others outside your chain of command. Although many of these seem trivial in nature, they are often some of the largest items audited during outside inspections.
 
I had 65+ sailors, including 4 tugboat crews, as my first tour division officer job, executing the daily schedule at Port Operations at a Naval Station. Women were not yet in the warfare communities, and the immediate precursor was sending women to shore billets that had just opened to women. I did have routine personnel paperwork (evals, training paperwork, request chits, Naval Academy application packages!), along with oversight of maintenance records, interdepartmental memos (no email yet), processing Navy messages, and every junior officer's favorite collateral duty, Classified Material Control Officer for the department. I coordinated and drafted responses to all ships' LOGREQs (logistics requests), which could run to several pages for a carrier and her battle group.

My boss, a prior enlisted officer, told me his leadership philosophy was "Brief me by exception." I was meant to lead my division, execute the schedule, solve problems, make decisions, manage resources, take responsibility, think for myself, be forward-looking, learn from peer division officers (two very salty CWO4s who brought me up) - and only go to him with exceptionally bad things or exceptionally good things. I learned fast how to interpret "exceptional." I salute you, LCDR F.!

I never had a job without some degree of "admin." A staff job, is, by its nature, admin-heavy. Operational jobs in the field usually have less.

As others have noted, depends on the job.
 
Just Dad said:
Ship master Pete------ "


Why do you say this? I understand that a Ensigns don't "run things" and believe me I understand DoD paper work. My kid isn't expecting 24hr a day adventure, but you are telling me that the Navy invests in these Mids in order to provide itself with mid level document clerks?

Please expand on this.
Click to expand...

I didn't say "document clerks" I said "staff officers" who supervise a variety of administrative tasks. Honestly, I'm not sure it requires further explanation. Pretty straightforward. The US Navy is a huge organization unto itself and needs worker bees just like IBM or any other large Fortune 1000 corporation. There are people to move, plans to draft, supplies to procure. Unless you plan to go into a technical speciality, go on to flight school, or advanced training, this is pretty much your existence during your post grad commitment.
 
Oh I agree LITS, just not sure I agree with the assessment that is what a newly minted officer generally spends their time doing. Most Marines will say 0-3 are below are by far the funnest officer ranks as its really before staff work becomes more and more what one does. Staff tours happen, some are better than others. But part of the career progression and some even are educational before returning to other jobs.
 
You've already had some great responses to your post. I'll just add these three, simple comments:
1) Your parents are categorically wrong in most of their criticisms of the Naval Academy. My guess is that you know more about it than they do.
2) Nobody has ever graduated from the Naval Academy and regretted it. Nobody ever said, "Graduating from the Naval Academy ruined my life." In fact, quite the opposite is far more common.
3) It's your decision.
 
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In the end, ask yourself if NOT going to the academy may be turn out to be one of the biggest regrets you'll ever have. If there is a hint of truth in that question, I think you owe it to yourself to forge your own path and GO. And ultimately, I agree with Memphis on this, "It is YOUR decision." I would also add that even when viewing this situation through "worst case scenario" lenses, going to USNA or any of the other service academies will not ruin your life unless you let it. Just my $.02!
 
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