Career Path Of A Meteorology And Oceanography Officer At United States Navy

I was selected as a Navy Reserve Officer Training Corps (ROTC) student. I had a full scholarship to the University of Kansas.

Growing up in Kansas, it was close to home. The scholarship covered tuition and books, but not room and board. When you report to ROTC, you're considered a Navy midshipman. You're not active duty at non-service affiliated academies, but you are considered part of the military.

I entered the University of Kansas with the intention of becoming a chemical engineer. However, I experienced family hardships, including my parents' divorce shortly after I left for college. As the eldest of three children, this was hard on me, and I felt responsible for fixing things at home.

This affected my role as a student. I ended up changing my major due to my grades. Then, I changed my major again because a mentor recognized I wasn't passionate about civil engineering. He supported my decision to change my degree, even though it meant I could potentially lose my scholarship.

He recognized I lacked passion, which I felt was lost because I believed I had failed myself, my unit, and the Navy by not following the path I had set. I hadn't maintained the expected grades, and it was a significant turning point in my life. It taught me the impact the right mentors can have on personal growth.

From Kansas, I commissioned as a surface warfare officer with a meteorology option. This meant going to a large deck ship, like an aircraft carrier or an amphib, and learning to earn my surface warfare pin. This involved ship qualifications and other roles, rather than just meteorology.

In the meteorology pipeline, which is part of information warfare, we send officers to those ships. It's an opportunity to gain a mentor in your field before you fully enter it. I reported to the USS Nimitz in Bremerton, Washington.

The ship was undergoing maintenance. I took it on deployment in 2017 and earned my warfare pin. I was then scheduled to go to the USS Fitzgerald, which had a collision in 2017.

This paused my transfers, and I decided to pursue meteorology without a second surface warfare tour. I worked with my detailer and went to the Naval Oceanography Anti-Submarine Warfare Center in Japan. There, I supported a different warfare area from another carrier and a destroyer, which helped me grow and lead a small team. That was my first meteorology tour.

From there, I went to the U.S. Naval Ice Center in Maryland. I worked in a niche community with international partnerships and collaboration. That was a huge opportunity for me. Then, I came here to pursue my master's degree at the Naval Postgraduate School in Monterey, California.