Army and Merchant Marine schools.

I was cleaning out files. I saved all of my diplomas and certificates for whoever has to deal with things after I am gone. I also saved the grades report from my captain's license.

During my army and sea careers I attended just about every school I could find and get into. In the army if anything was offered to me the answer was generally "Sure. Why not?"

When you were in an on post classroom type school you were exempt from formations, inspections and the usual crap. I lived off post and got up and went to school and went home after class. It got me away from the drudgery of barracks life.

At first I didn't realize it but it gave me promotion points. I had figured on getting out of the service as an E-4 and hadn't given E-5 much thought. While I was trying to escape the drudgery of barracks life I was also aiming myself toward promotions.

I had been in service for a total of maybe 1.5 years and had already made E-4 and little did I know I'd make E-5 at about the 2 year mark because of being as close to a professional student as I could make myself. All I had to do was keep getting good grades.

Same held true for me during my career. Every time a school came up I'd call my port captain and said I wanted in.

By then I realized that every single course under my belt made me more and more valuable. I even took a cooking course at Piney Point, the union school. I got paid for a lot of this and it also gave me value as an employee. 

While the truth is that a lot of these courses and schools in reality did little or nothing to improve my actual hands on job performance, they established me as a serious and motivated employee and may or may not have actually helped the company on insurance rates as I do know that insurance companies take an interest in on paper credentials. 

During my career I recall three or four layoffs and I never suffered one although some people with more seniority got laid off. I managed not to get laid off and I seriously think it was because they had invested more in me than they had a lot of other people. I knew my job and they had invested a lot of money into me and they wanted a return on it.

The more education I got meant the more they had into me and as a result I became more valuable.

When I first entered the industry I sailed with a few skippers that had been grandfathered by the Coast Guard and been given smaller licenses that enabled them to keep their jobs when they changed policy and required licensing in the tug industry.

Some of these men were either totally illiterate or semi-literate. Many of these men saw the writing on the wall and upgraded. Others stayed with their licenses and either fell by the wayside or hung onto their careers by a thread.

I remember one illiterate skipper upgrading all the way up to a 1600 ton license by passing oral exams. Later I actually got to watch him get pissed off and had his crew teach him to read and it's a rather heart warming tale along the lines of someone getting eyesight for the first time. Maybe I'll post that one later. There's a lot of humor, kindness and pathos in the story and the crew used practically every teaching aid they could, including the Three Stooges. Seriously. They used part of a Stooges episode to help teach the skipper to read.

A tug skipper on my first tour in the industry told me, "Piccolo, if you can get a license to drive a battleship then get it. You'll never need it, but get it anyway. Fill your jacket up with as much good paper as you can. It will keep you employed because not only is the company interested in paper but so are all of the other companies."

I followed that advice and had an excellent career.

 

To find out why the blog is pink just cut and paste this: http://piccoloshash.blogspot.com/2009/12/my-feminine-side-blog-stays-pink.html NO ANIMALS WERE HARMED IN THE WRITING OF TODAY'S ESSAY