Great Mistakes!
I went to extreme lengths to NOT go to Great Lakes for ET A school when I got out of BE&E school in Orlando, I volunteered for sub duty and got to go to A school in Pensacola.
Good luck and I'll second the part about you didn't really want to be a nuke. Being a nuke sucks. Going to sea? Nukes standing watch 2-3 days before, In port? no shore power? Nukes steaming regular watches, no liberty. Back home? nukes still on steaming watch for two days just in case.
That's a bit over the top, IMO (3383 surface-ship reactor operator, onboard USS Theodore Roosevelt CVN-71 from Jul93-May97, following boot at NTC Orlando May-Aug91, ET 'A' and NNPS at NTC Orlando through Nov92, and Prototype Training in Ballston Spa NY through Jun93). Definitely nukes were first-on/last-off, maintaining steaming watches because no one wants a nuke ship in their harbor (or because there's no pier big enough to handle the carrier anyways, in a lot of our cases), but no liberty? Not at all - we just rotated duty days, same as every other department on the ship. On the carrier, we were able to take down one plant and leave the other up to run hotel loads, and have 1/3 of the department on duty every day on a rotating basis (and we were free to make arrangements with members of our division to either substitute duty days to get a longer stretch off at a time or, quietly, to pay someone what they were willing in order to take a duty day outright, which some people did). Can't speak for sub sailors, mind you - but on the carrier, nukes just had to deal with the first-on/last-off crap, not sacrifice liberty entirely.
In boot camp, we NEVER had a radio, and didn't get any geedunk or phone privileges until Week 6 IIRC. Took a trip offbase the weekend before Graduation Week, subject to good performance - our company went to a water park, which was better, IMO, than those who went to Disney/MGM, and had full access (off-duty) to phone and Exchange during that last week. We always had an iron for uniforms, though, and weren't permitted to keep an "inspection set".
Glad to hear things are working out for you, Freakazoid, even if you didn't get to go nuke - at least this way, you're not locked in for 6 years active duty, if you decide not to re-up. Hope you continue to enjoy your time in service, and take every educational opportunity you can!! Let the Navy pay for a degree, and do classes at sea whenever you can!
Come to think of it, take lots of tours in your port visits, too - one thing I really regret, out of all my port visits in Italy, was I never once made the trip to Rome. At least I got to Paris when we pulled into Cannes, and visited Bethlehem and Jerusalem during port calls in Haifa, although our liberty in Barcelona Spain was cancelled on account of rough seas (couldn't hook up the liberty barge for the boats, so we sat in port and looked out at the shore for 3 days. That sucked.). Go see as much of the world as they'll let you.
