THURSDAY, JULY 1, 2004. 2242 (10:42)

Blogmen 1st class,

Senior Chief told me, when talking about my position as a yoeman, that I'm like the mother hen of the division, I need to gather everyone up and make sure they're where they belong when they belong there, and really take care of everyone. That even though I'm not at the top of the recruit chain of command, I run the division and I keep it running properly, or improperly if I don't do my job well enough (this past sentence having been mostly paraphrase). This is especially true since the other division staff, with the exception of the one who doesn't speak English, are of not-so-people-friendly-personas. That is, the division staff of my level or higher. Several of our staff under my level are fabulous people, but the 4 others that have 3-chevron collar devices (like mine, indicating Recruit Petty Officer 1st class) and most of all our recruit chief petty officer (who wears a gold anchor, like real chief petty officers) have serious issues in either their people skills or their integrity. I've already brought this up to some of the RDC's, but nothing that I know of has been done yet. So, here I am, mother-henning my division and plenty of the other division's females as well, and only getting done with about half of what needs to be done as far as getting good at making my rack or folding my clothes perfectly or studying some of our test material.

I decided today, though, that I really don't care about the performance standards here so much, especially after I saw some INFURIATING practices during one of our inspections. I think that it all comes down to politics and if you're one person, you'll sail through, and if you're someone else, no matter how perfect you are, they'll break you down anyway, by pulling some dishonest crap on the inspection. All that hard work for nothing. So I really lost my motivation as far as that goes, and I'm now just all about helping the individual members in my division and brother's females to work through their weaknesses and grow into great sailors and mostly survive bootcamp well. I think that's more important, really, and is certainly more achievable than the impossibility of getting everything all right on inspections. Because after all, what score I got on my bootcamp personal inspection isn't going to matter nearly so much even 2 months from now as how I helped a shipmate talk through her problem or get to the test he needed will matter for all eternity.