Saturday, July 3, 2010

HOW TO DO IT

My dad took me aside when I was commissioned, by him, and gave me some perfectly good advice. I would recommend it to anybody seeking a commission in our armed forces.

1. Don't ever measure yourself against your peers.
2. Always just do the very best job that you can do.

Worked for me. Making Flag is a personal ambition that I never had. That's a fire that must burn within from the time one is an Ensign. That is all 'contacts', and 'perfect jobs', and schmoozing and there are people to whom this comes naturally. Not me, not grandad.

I was certifiably ruthless until I got married, 22 years into a navy sort of career. The ruthless got a tweak at that point.

3 comments:

Justthisguy said...

One of the things I like about Neptunus Lex is that he was never an admiral-striker. See "A Glimps of Hell", a book about the Iowa turret fire, for the damage that kind of guy can do. Admittedly, he was assisted in his folly by an unsupervised Aspie warrant gunner (Hey, it takes one to know one!)

Justthisguy said...

Umm, that's "Glimpse."

HMS Defiant said...

Lex was in the line. The aviation bunch in the navy have a far tougher row to hoe. They have to spend a year at nuke school, spend a year or 18 months as XO on a CVN, command a CVN and then they compete with their peers who were Executive Asssistants at PEO or PERS or OPNAV. They all see it though. Making Flag is a personal sacrifice. It's geo baching and not at home. What's a little scary is that now applies to making 06.