Kennedy Island: Big Navy Day!

As some of you know, yesterday I was promoted to my new rank of Lieutenant Commander (LCDR). I have pics posted on Facebook, so if you haven't seen them, check them out! If you don't have FB, then I will also include a few of them on here as well.

This promotion is somewhat bitter sweet for me. See, in the military, when you start off as a direct accession as I did, you get commissioned as an Ensign (O1), the lowest man on the Naval Officer totem pole. After two years as a Butter Bar (yes, this is the unfortunate term used in reference to an Ensign because of our lonely little gold bar that denotes our rank), you then get promoted to the rank of Lieutenant Junior Grade (O2). This promotion is given after two years, without having to do much for it except your job and not doing anything wrong in the military. From the rank of LTJG, you then get promoted to the rank of Lieutenant (03) again after two years serving as a "JG" without messing up. This is where it starts to get interesting…

Once you get promoted to lieutenant, you know spend more than two years in this rank. You also now must "prove" yourself worthy of being selected to your next rank of LCDR. You are supposed to hit the ground running as a LT, racking up as much experience possible, volunteering for numerous command and department collaterals (basically one person doing three full-time jobs…and by "volunteering" the term we use in the military is actually "volunTOLD"), and doing whatever possible to make it "look great on your FITREP." Side note; a FITREP is our annual performance evaluation (to put it in civilian terms). It's used to compare us/make us competitive with our fellow officers of the same rank. This quote is one of my favorites and is used more often in the Officer community than I care to think about. Basically it becomes known as the wooden stake in the heart.

Most often the scenarios play out like this:
Department Head (who over time has become groomed on how to delegate unwanted/excessive work load) comes to you and says "LT Kennedy, I have a tasker that I know I can trust you to take charge of. You have shown me you are more than capable of multi-tasking and have exceptional organizational skills, and along with your sense of responsibility, make you more than qualified to complete this" (yes folks, this is really how it goes down…LOTS of smoke up the a** to make you want to puff out your chest and have a momentary lapse of reality as you just got 3 weeks of work handed to you with the understanding you will have said tasker completed within 3 days. You really do lose temporary sight of the bullsh** flag waving a mile away, attempting to flag you down and make you run, run, run!!!). Now here it comes…are you ready? Insert wooden stake through the heart because the conversation always ends with "and you know LT Kennedy, it will look great on your FITREP." Ugh…slow, painful death.

Ok, so the time you spend as a LT can vary based upon the number of "openings" so to say to the next rank and when your name becomes "in zone." If I tried to explain all of these military shenanigans to you guys, this post would be two days long, so pardon me if I skip a few explanations. I became in zone after 4 years as a LT. Fortunately, during those 4 years I had quite the job (and life!) experiences and various other assignments that really made me competitive amongst my peers. Low and behold, ranking board convenes, results come out, and I was selected! Sigh…now I must wait almost one year to actually be promoted to my new rank…again, this could take 2 days to explain why, but let's just say that for the most part it has to do with the government and money because with a promotion to a new rank there is a pay raise…and of course they have figured out how to regulate the promotions to spend fewer dollars in the long run.

So why bitter sweet? Well, there is a sense of pride from within that knows I busted my bum (I'm done with the profanity for now) to get where I am. My last job at my previous command was by no means easy and for a moment in time I was holding down a job that was billeted for an O5 (yep, as an O3 I was doing a job designated for someone who was one rank higher than my new current rank!). I'm not patting myself on the back by any means, but knowing I had all my checks in the boxes and then some when I was looked at by the ranking board, I felt very rewarded by being selected to the next rank…the first time I actually had to EARN my next rank.

That was the sweet. The bitter? An 04 in the Navy gets you noticed a little differently. By this I mean what is expected of you is 3x that of before (if you can imagine). As a LT, I was already sacrificing a lot of personal time and a lot of sanity, but my husband was equally as busy figuring out the ortho world so it was easy to throw our support to each other, high-five each other on our way out the door, and see each other when we see each other. Now that we have Little Man in our lives, the idea of losing any precious time with him that is being taken away all so that I can make things "look great on my FITREP" doesn't really jive with me. I certainly don't mind doing my job, but I'm not gunning for selection to the next rank or higher. It may sound like a poor attitude, but some people are die-hard military and will do whatever it takes to keep making rank. I, on the other hand, want the balance of doing what I do, but not at a loss of valuable family time. Too many people in the military are working from 06:00-19:00 or later (that's 7pm for you non-military time folks), and sadly, these are people with families. And these same people go to work on the weekends and holidays to get "caught up." To me that is just sad.

So, while I will relish in knowing that I am now a LCDR and I didn't get here by sitting on my tush, I will now have to see how things play out and try to find the balance. It will probably be a good 5-7 years before I would even be in zone for the next rank, Commander, so I have some time to figure all of this out.

The best part of being promoted to LCDR? Being able to have my husband be my Promoting Officer. I didn't have to hold an official promotion ceremony since all officers have to do is sign the paperwork saying we accept our new rank, but this time I chose to do the ceremony…with the only reason being the opportunity to have LCDR Kennedy promote the new LCDR Kennedy :)