Quick YN Question
 

Hi all,
As you may of read around I dropped from JCAC, and now I'm contracted 4YO to be a YN.
I'm expecting lots of office/ admin work and the like.
My only question is what are the chances I'll get shore duty right outta A-School.
My money is just needs of the navy.

As you said, it always comes down to needs of the Navy, but for YNs it is pretty easy to get shore duty out of A school at this point.

Here is a link to the NPC page for YN

http://www.public.navy.mil/bupers-np.../Pages/YN.aspx

Click on YN Community Overview (current as of Oct 2)

Look at the Force Structure Manning to BA for E1-E3

Sea is currently staffed at 90.4% of BA (raw numbers = 35 openings)
Shore is currently staffed at 54% of BA (raw numbers = 69 openings)


So right now it is pretty easy to get shore.

And I also know that specifically out of the last graduating class nearly everyone got either shore duty or overseas.

That's what I read & thought, thank you.

Hey if you have any specific questions about the YN A school, that is where I am right now.

Don't be surprised when you get here, this base has a real sleepy village vibe. There is not a lot to do around here, but honestly for me after the madness of bootcamp that was really really nice. It also makes it a lot harder to get into trouble...

You're in YN A-School or just the NAS?

YN A school, about halfway through.

How are the living conditions?
How are the tests like?
What's your room like?

Im hoping to be first in my class, in order to pick orders.

In order asked

Living conditions. I assume with this you mean more like the base in general. If you have ever lived in the south, that gives you a good idea what the base is like. We are a joint space with the Marines even though they are their own command, and there is also a Naval Air Station here that does their own thing. On base pretty much all there is to do is PT and go to the on base bar. There is also a bowling alley run by MWR and they are in the process of making a paintball course, but there is no ETA on that. In town there are your usual set of stores but nothing special that I have found so far. There are actually a lot of outdoors activities around like river kayaking and such, but it is hard to find people to go out with you to do that.

Tests. There are two basic types of tests, performance tests and knowledge tests. Performance tests will be along the lines of "here is a rough draft, type up a properly formatted naval correspondence of this type" and you have to make sure that everything is absolutely perfect. Knowledge tests are focused on the actual content but most of them you can use the references, so they are really more an exercise of knowing where to look for the answer.

Rooms. The barracks feel more like an old hotel on the outside, the rooms themselves have a common living space with 4 "tacs." Each tac can have up to three people in them, but most of the rooms have only two people. Your supplied furniture is a bed with two drawers in front, a desk with a drawer, and a gear locker. Each individual tac also has its own refrigerator and bathroom. During inspections they will only inspect items out in the open so as long as you put everything away and don't leave any food unsealed you are good to go. The flooring is a basic ceramic tile, the tile in the individual tacs is nicer than the tile in the mod common room.

Lastly about the top of class pick your orders thing, I am sorry to say that the YN A school no longer practices that. You get whatever orders you get, and that is that. It doesn't matter if you are first or last in your class in terms of your orders. However it DOES matter if you are first or second because the first two students of a class are honor graduates, and the honor grads get entered into the Early Advancement Program. In the EAP you get recommended for early advancement at your next command, and your next CO will decide if you deserve it or not based on evaluation by your supervisors. If they approve it, you don't have to take the advancement exam for E4. Commander Stockton (The CO of NTTC) also caps anyone E1 or E2 that are honor grads. So if you are an E2 then at graduation you are made E3 AND put into the EAP, so you could potentially go from E2 to E4 by March.

I personally like it down here. Like I have said elsewhere I value peace and quiet and boot camp was madness. The PT is not too bad either. The nice thing about this base is that you do a PFA during your indoc week (all indocs will take it) and if you pass that plus your indoc personnel inspec, then you are automatically phase three. Right now if you fail a room inspection or personnel inspection, then you are just put down to phase two. But you can advance back up on the second week if you pass everything again. So you go from having nothing from boot to having full freedoms.

Three last questions:
Forced group PT?
Internet in Barrack rooms?
Finally, what are the odds of getting what you want on your dream sheet, and/or what do you put down (Commands or just sea/ shore).

Group PT Monday, Wednesday, and Thursday. Usually one day will be just a random assortment of exercises, one day will be a run, and the third will be "cardio blast" which is basically navy-ized Zumba.

There is GoWifi in the dorms and another company that nobody uses that is just identified as "internet#" with a number replacing the #. It has much better speeds so I don't know why no one uses it. You have to pay for it either way.

You do a standard dream sheet. List in order your preference for overseas, shore, and sea. You don't list commands, just states/countries. The detailers do a pretty good job of putting you at least on the same side of the country you listed highest. We do have like 20% of the YNs currently here going overseas though. That could change in a week or in a month or in a year, but right now there are a lot of billets for overseas and shore duties.

I don't understand your focus on shore duty; enlighten me?
Also, do you understand the difference between sea and shore duty? You could be at a shore site and still be on sea duty, for instance. It's more than just where you show up everyday.

/r
CTT1

CTT1,
There is some stuff that a shore tour will let me do to help get my life on track,
and also there are some opportunities that I really want now, at shore that sea can't provide.

However sea can provide some cool opportunities too, that im aware of.

Gotcha, what were you looking to do? Also, there are some sea tours where you'll always be at a shore site. Sea duty doesn't always mean getting underway.

But hey, regardless, do what's best for you man.

/r
CTT1

Thanks Pringle! Youve answered a lot of questions for me personally!

I leave for Missippi in January.
I should be done with YN school early Febuary.

What are the school hours like?
How's the galley?

More questions to come soon.

Galley is alright, lunch is the best meal. Decent quality and good portions. Honestly though you are paying only 4 bucks a day for a LOT of food, capitalize on it.

School hours are Monday Wednesday Thursday and Friday 0700 to 1500 with a lunch break, Tuesday it goes till 1600. Friday you do a command chat that is basically a liberty brief real fast. Tuesday usually that time is used to field day your classroom. You do muster to head down to the schoolhouse at about 0615 or 0630. Not too bad

I guess you martch to class?

We do. We arrange into fleets mostly based on rate that double as duty sections. The CO, XO, and CMC for each fleet are student leadership positions and change every two weeks or so.

Today we are annoyed because our CO messed up calling facing movements during our friday pers inspec and it cost us fleet of the week (fleet of the week gets a PT day at the gym)

What's the duty/ watch situation like?

3 duty section rotation. Each day is a different duty section. On the weekday your duty section musters for duty at 1630 unless PT ran long, and again at 1830 for some reason. On the weekend you muster at 0730 for the first muster, usually 1630 for the second muster, then 0730 the next day to change over the watch.

Most of the watches are your typical 4 hour watch, except for Duty Driver which is an all day duty (and what I currently get stuck with every freaking duty day)

3? That sucks, at CID we have 8. Plus PAC and other non-normal sections.

We also only have like 200 students or so. It's not so bad, it just means you have to actually do something.

And we will have much more duty in the fleet

Yeah.

Hey here is a couple of pictures of my room.

The picture of the desk with the surface is my part of the room.

http://imgur.com/bFpUC4G

http://imgur.com/mFJOJ7B

Thanks, so any tips/ tricks/ tidbits of information you'd like to share about the school or life on base?

Number one thing is that there is a blue folder that contains the student introduction guide thing. Read it. Study it. Make sure that you understand it cover to cover. Everything that they do inspection and duty wise is detailed in that manual.

There is not a whole lot to do here, and it would suck to get phased down for something stupid like the deck in your head was a little dirty, or you left out an electronic.

Same thing at CIDUS Corry.