Recently the Navy offered me a jump into the second quarter of my life as a prospective Submarine Officer in the "Navy Nuclear Propulsion Officer Candidate (NUPOC) Program." The pay seemed comparable to what I could make in the civilian world*, the position was guaranteed for my five year service, and the experience managing a team that worked directly with a nuclear reactor would have likely proven invaluable when finding my life after the Navy.
* On top of comparable pay they would have given me $100 a day, everyday, until I graduated with my master's degree... on top of a $15,000 selling soul bonus.
So far I haven't signed my life away for two reasons:
If the program is worth entering, then why does the Navy recruit people in school? It seems they could offer this program to recently graduated Nuclear Engineers and not pay them to do nothing before they graduate. So my conclusion is that they are exploiting their informational advantage. ((not that it's relevant, but...) I believe any one person is inherently good, but any group of people is not necessary.) A recently graduated Nuclear Engineer may look at the Navy's offer and laugh, while an uncertain undergraduate has never gotten a serious career offer before and might be tricked into signing five years of their life away without knowing what its worth.
The second reason has been based on a potential misunderstanding. I am under the impression that a candidate signed their life away and then their future position in the Navy was determined. But I guess now that I think about it, I could probably make the position I was looking at. Since that's no longer a reason and I promised two of them I'll makeup another. The importance of life does seem to be bell-curved in nature (you'll never guess what I'm looking at while writing this) and I don't think that I'm going to make a decision that affects so much of second quarter life while still in the first. (... and yes, I am afraid of commitment (... not that that's relevant either)).
Realizing that I'm still very much so in the first quarter of life, ~600 days away from graduation, and not worried about either makes me think that I'm a pretty content person (I was going to say 'complacent' but I don't like the self-serving implications some of the definitions have). With regard to my second quarter: whatever will be, will be... future me can figure the rest of my life out; for the future is not ours to see. Hopefully, he's happy with whatever career wanders his way after graduation.
Also of interest, yesterday a rattlesnake offered me a one way jump to the fourth quarter of my life. But, I declined, I'm pretty interested to how future me plays the future I've dealt him.
Peace -- Mike
Saturday, September 19, 2009
Sunday, September 13, 2009
The Past Couple of Days
Thursday
I looked at the square root of 5 once around 7:00a and just memorized it to 10 digits without really trying (and I can still remember it all),(5 because I've already memorized sqrt 2 and 3 to 10 digits). Dave (my new neighbor / drinking buddy) wanted to play pool, so we headed over to the Blue Canyon around 8:00p. This was our second time to do so. He's better than me at pool, consequently I believe he won three out of the five games over 3 or 4 beers; mostly blue moon (with orange) and Coors Light. We then stumbled over to Ace High Tavern around 9:30p because I knew some kids that were going to be there. Thursday is beer pong night, so we watched and chatted with lots of people in the bar drinking pitcher after pitcher of Coors Light. Turns out I knew many of the people there. Colby came in second in the BP tournament. After around midnight Dave switched over to Whiskey and Coke, so I just started getting Coors Light be the glass. We stumbled out around 1:30a, just before closing. Somewhere in there I glanced at the square root of 7 and memorized that to 10 digits. Also of interest, those two square roots have some striking similarities in the first 10 digits (sqrt (5) = 2.2360679773, sqrt (7) = 2.6457513110).
Friday
Turns out I have school on Friday independent of whether or not I'm still drunk when I wake up. I went to sleep around 2:00a and got up at 6:15a for my class at 9:00a. Curtis and I sat front row in Macroeconomics because the second row did not have available neighboring seats. Dr. Kulkarni tells some pretty corny jokes throughout every class, and I appreciated them a bit more this class. I didn't ever break out laughing, but I often just sat there smiling on the inside. I confessed to Curtis, who found it pretty interesting, that I was probably still drunk (making this my first time to ever be drunk or even hung-over in class). I don't believe my note taking or material retention was too affected. After Macro came Probability (as it usually does) and Dr. Navidi is really funny, also in a corny way. (On a side note: lol at http://download.lardlad.com/sounds/season16/snitch8.mp3) So, overall classes were pretty fun. I got back to the house around 11:10a and while really hung-over I decided to go camping (of note, I'm really hung-over while writing this). I quickly texted around to see if people wanted to come, turns out they too had class on a weekday. I did my laundry, packed up, and left around 2:50p for White Ranch Open Space. I weighted in at 180 lbs and 221 lbs with the pack. My walk to White Ranch was 4.1 miles with 300' elevation gain; I made it in exactly 1 hour. Once in the park I went an additional 4.0 miles with another 1500' elevation gain in 1 hour and 6 minutes. Unfortunately, the well on top of the mountain was dry, so over the 20 hours I was gone I only had 2 liters of water to drink. I spent some time talking to a fellow backpacker by the name of Darrell. Friday night I slept from 9:30p to 8:30a and enjoyed it.
Saturday
In the morning I finished my loaf of banana bread, packed up, and started down the mountain pretty early to avoid the 50% chance of rain starting at noon. I was pretty close to the parking lot when it started, so I asked a mountain biker by the name of Gary for a ride to Golden. Making this my first time to hitchhike. Gary dropped me off in northern Golden and I walked back arriving around 11:00a. I weighted in at 177 lbs and 211 lbs with pack. The seven pounds the pack lost was comprised of 2 L of water and 3 lbs of bread. So, (without dropping trou) I lost a pound every two hours even during my 11 hours of sleep. After unpacking, eating, taking a shower, eating, RockBand, eating, homework, telling Dave his phone number had changed, taking a walk around town, and giving directions to Lyons park I spent a bit of time on the intersphere then noticed a party on top of 715-B. Apparently for Angel and her two friends the roof is the place to be at dusk. Around 7:20p Dave and I headed out to the bowling alley. I won the first game but both of our scores were pretty terrible. The second game I believe Dave won by a couple pins but we both scored around double my first game score. We finished up our second pitcher of Coors Light and began searching for the pool table. There were a few people in the back room, two of them playing pool, so we got started on our third pitcher and listened to the DJ. The music was that of a mafia hangout and it worked well in the pool-table-in-the-back-room atmosphere. Dave challenged the two guys playing pool to doubles and while they were finishing up their game Josh showed up around 10:10p (driving, Josh only had one glass (the plastic kind of glass)). So we got our fourth pitcher and started playing doubles (alternating every shot not turn). We lost the first, won the second, and lost the third while listening to the ramblings of a 55 year old roofer. Josh took off around the time Dave and I began playing singles, as usual he won by one ball. Dave talked Royce (the more talkative old guy) into buying the four of us Jose Cuervo shots, complete with salted thumb and lime. Although, I don't think the salt did very much. At this point it was a few minutes from closing, so Dave and I had to drink the fifth pitcher pretty quickly, then we sat around outside for 20 minutes talking to the DJ who was pretty cool. We stumbled over to Burger King, got a car to trip the sensor, ordered, and were thrown out of the drive through for some rude comments Dave made at the first window. Back home, I walked in to find quite the gathering of Physics students preparing to watch Sean of the Dead. So I poured myself one of what they were drinking (Skyy and OJ) and joined them. I fell asleep as the characters made their way through the alley passing similar versions of themselves ~2:00a.
Sunday
I woke up at 5:00a without realizing I had slept then wandered up to bed and got some real sleep. I got up around 10:30a and after some delicious eating started writing this. I'll probably do some Senior Design homework this evening and head to bed early.
Welp, that was a pretty fun weekend...
Now that I've got the equipment in Golden I'll likely start going camping pretty frequently. Although, White Ranch is really the only place within walking distance where camping is allowed.
Peace – Mike
I looked at the square root of 5 once around 7:00a and just memorized it to 10 digits without really trying (and I can still remember it all),(5 because I've already memorized sqrt 2 and 3 to 10 digits). Dave (my new neighbor / drinking buddy) wanted to play pool, so we headed over to the Blue Canyon around 8:00p. This was our second time to do so. He's better than me at pool, consequently I believe he won three out of the five games over 3 or 4 beers; mostly blue moon (with orange) and Coors Light. We then stumbled over to Ace High Tavern around 9:30p because I knew some kids that were going to be there. Thursday is beer pong night, so we watched and chatted with lots of people in the bar drinking pitcher after pitcher of Coors Light. Turns out I knew many of the people there. Colby came in second in the BP tournament. After around midnight Dave switched over to Whiskey and Coke, so I just started getting Coors Light be the glass. We stumbled out around 1:30a, just before closing. Somewhere in there I glanced at the square root of 7 and memorized that to 10 digits. Also of interest, those two square roots have some striking similarities in the first 10 digits (sqrt (5) = 2.2360679773, sqrt (7) = 2.6457513110).
Friday
Turns out I have school on Friday independent of whether or not I'm still drunk when I wake up. I went to sleep around 2:00a and got up at 6:15a for my class at 9:00a. Curtis and I sat front row in Macroeconomics because the second row did not have available neighboring seats. Dr. Kulkarni tells some pretty corny jokes throughout every class, and I appreciated them a bit more this class. I didn't ever break out laughing, but I often just sat there smiling on the inside. I confessed to Curtis, who found it pretty interesting, that I was probably still drunk (making this my first time to ever be drunk or even hung-over in class). I don't believe my note taking or material retention was too affected. After Macro came Probability (as it usually does) and Dr. Navidi is really funny, also in a corny way. (On a side note: lol at http://download.lardlad.com/sounds/season16/snitch8.mp3) So, overall classes were pretty fun. I got back to the house around 11:10a and while really hung-over I decided to go camping (of note, I'm really hung-over while writing this). I quickly texted around to see if people wanted to come, turns out they too had class on a weekday. I did my laundry, packed up, and left around 2:50p for White Ranch Open Space. I weighted in at 180 lbs and 221 lbs with the pack. My walk to White Ranch was 4.1 miles with 300' elevation gain; I made it in exactly 1 hour. Once in the park I went an additional 4.0 miles with another 1500' elevation gain in 1 hour and 6 minutes. Unfortunately, the well on top of the mountain was dry, so over the 20 hours I was gone I only had 2 liters of water to drink. I spent some time talking to a fellow backpacker by the name of Darrell. Friday night I slept from 9:30p to 8:30a and enjoyed it.
Saturday
In the morning I finished my loaf of banana bread, packed up, and started down the mountain pretty early to avoid the 50% chance of rain starting at noon. I was pretty close to the parking lot when it started, so I asked a mountain biker by the name of Gary for a ride to Golden. Making this my first time to hitchhike. Gary dropped me off in northern Golden and I walked back arriving around 11:00a. I weighted in at 177 lbs and 211 lbs with pack. The seven pounds the pack lost was comprised of 2 L of water and 3 lbs of bread. So, (without dropping trou) I lost a pound every two hours even during my 11 hours of sleep. After unpacking, eating, taking a shower, eating, RockBand, eating, homework, telling Dave his phone number had changed, taking a walk around town, and giving directions to Lyons park I spent a bit of time on the intersphere then noticed a party on top of 715-B. Apparently for Angel and her two friends the roof is the place to be at dusk. Around 7:20p Dave and I headed out to the bowling alley. I won the first game but both of our scores were pretty terrible. The second game I believe Dave won by a couple pins but we both scored around double my first game score. We finished up our second pitcher of Coors Light and began searching for the pool table. There were a few people in the back room, two of them playing pool, so we got started on our third pitcher and listened to the DJ. The music was that of a mafia hangout and it worked well in the pool-table-in-the-back-room atmosphere. Dave challenged the two guys playing pool to doubles and while they were finishing up their game Josh showed up around 10:10p (driving, Josh only had one glass (the plastic kind of glass)). So we got our fourth pitcher and started playing doubles (alternating every shot not turn). We lost the first, won the second, and lost the third while listening to the ramblings of a 55 year old roofer. Josh took off around the time Dave and I began playing singles, as usual he won by one ball. Dave talked Royce (the more talkative old guy) into buying the four of us Jose Cuervo shots, complete with salted thumb and lime. Although, I don't think the salt did very much. At this point it was a few minutes from closing, so Dave and I had to drink the fifth pitcher pretty quickly, then we sat around outside for 20 minutes talking to the DJ who was pretty cool. We stumbled over to Burger King, got a car to trip the sensor, ordered, and were thrown out of the drive through for some rude comments Dave made at the first window. Back home, I walked in to find quite the gathering of Physics students preparing to watch Sean of the Dead. So I poured myself one of what they were drinking (Skyy and OJ) and joined them. I fell asleep as the characters made their way through the alley passing similar versions of themselves ~2:00a.
Sunday
I woke up at 5:00a without realizing I had slept then wandered up to bed and got some real sleep. I got up around 10:30a and after some delicious eating started writing this. I'll probably do some Senior Design homework this evening and head to bed early.
Welp, that was a pretty fun weekend...
Now that I've got the equipment in Golden I'll likely start going camping pretty frequently. Although, White Ranch is really the only place within walking distance where camping is allowed.
Peace – Mike
Subscribe to:
Comments (Atom)
