A Whole New World...

And a new, fabulous point of view.

Right after work I went down to the Navy office to finally get measured "the Navy way" for them to tell what they believe my BMI is (I had a real one a couple months ago; the kind where you hold the little gadget and it scores that somehow with your height & weight... and that said it was 27% or so). So we went next door to the dry cleaning place for the lady to do it there (male recruiters aren't allowed to measure female recruits). Unfortunately, she didn't do it very accurately, and the calculator said my BMI was 44% (lol - the maximum is 33%). This is all because I am 6 lbs. over the weight limit. If you make that mark, they don't care about the BMI.

While we were figuring out when to schedule the physical, we talked a bit about the rate I want again. The RP thing is pretty full up, so it would be really difficult to get it in the first place and advance once I got there (that's being a Chaplain's Assistant). So when asked about why I wanted it again, I talked about how I wanted to informally be available for people to talk to if they were interested in Christianity or faith, or had questions about Jesus. The library thing they do was a cool extra feature of the job (I thought). They say an RP isn't allowed to counsel at all, and my recruiters said I'd have better luck talking about faith the way I want to if I wasn't under any kind of "official" capacity... I guess that makes sense, once you consider it.

Last week, the lead from this office drove me down to MEPS, and on the way he talked about his job, before he was a recruiter. He was an Electrical Technician, repairing all kinds of communication equipment. He said he would help sailors with their personal electronics on the side... and that's when I thought... "that would be neat!" So, yes, believe it or not, I want to be an ET! With my ASVAB score, I qualify, and they say there are not overcrowded with females in that rate, so it's more likely I would get what I want. What an opportunity! Learn a whole new set of skills that would be very useful and readily transferable to lots of regular jobs, including Library Science nowadays. I have done nothing but clerical jobs so far, so this would really be stepping out on a limb for me. To top it off, upon completion of the A school, they give you E-4, which comes along with some other benefits, like being allowed to live on a base instead of on the ship when at port. Whoa! What a different idea all of a sudden!

After this long discussion, on my way out the door, I noticed the female Army recruiter was there! So I went back in, found my recruiter, and I got measured correctly! They say I'm at a 33.5% BMI... which sounds much better.

In fact, EVERYTHING sounds much better.

Jp