Member-only story
I joined the U.S. Coast Guard right out of high school, as one does. At least as one does if your father is a tax cheat and you don’t want his lies about his income on your financial aid forms. So while every student in my New Jersey high school class went to college in one form or another, I and one other senior joined the military. (We weren’t friends, he was kind of an asshole and I heard he joined the Marines.)
I surprised many of my teachers and classmates by making it through boot camp (I was in the chess club and ran cross country in high school so I was nobody’s pic for most likely to join the military in my yearbook) The cross country actually came in handy as I was the fastest in my company as we had to run a mile and a half for graduation.
Anyway, after my four years I decided I didn’t want to go to college without a purpose. So I decided on the practical application of learning to drive huge ass ships. That led me to apply and be accepted to the California Maritime Academy in “beautiful” Vallejo California.
The first semester went pretty well. I had the highest GPA in my major “Marine Transportation” which was one of the 5 majors available at Cal Maritime…
