Have some questions about Navy A-school...?

Question

hi.
my bf is in IL for the training at the moment. He will graduate in few days and will go to A-school (engeneering) after it. How long is it? 10 weeks?
I wanna go visit him few days but he wrote that there are 3 parts during school, and only in the 3.Part it is allowed to stay the whole night outside. So how is it? It makes only sense to visit him after Part 1+2? How is it on the weekends in Part 1 n 2 (like during the week just until 9pm or midnight?).

After school is will go on a ship in VA, how often and for how long has he to go oversea? And where are the most ships around?

It will be very hard cuz I am going to my homecountry back in April and we havent that much time until April. Sucks :-(

Ok, I tried it ;)
Thanks.

Answer 1

Well each engeneering school is different in length but how it used to work when I was there was that there was stages for going out all night at Great Lakes. Usually after your first two weeks u can go out all weekend and not come back if you don't have duty. Atleast thats how it worked in 98-99 when I was there. He will get to pick orders in phase 3 usually your last two to three weeks you get to pick which orders you want. It just depends on what the Navy needs and where. He could get VA or he might get Washington state. He might even get something like a USNS, civilian military ship, pretty koshar cause once you do 6 months there you get to go just about anywhere you want. But on USNS' your never home.

Answer 2

Please forgive such a general answer, but it depends.

First, it depends on the particular A school and the training. Some schools aren't as strict as others. My brother was in A school at NAS Millington, and he came home on weekends that he didn't have duty. Other A schools, however, might have more demanding studies and/or more classified studies, which may restrict the students.

Also, A schools are varied in length, again, based on complexity. I was a Yeoman, and A school for administrative rates aren't nearly as detailed and complicated as A schools for aircraft repairmen (which is what my brother was).

As for his ship, that, too, depends: it depends on what ship he gets assigned to, and when. For instance, he could get assigned to a ship that just returned from a deployment, in which case he wouldn't have to go out for some time. Then again, he might arrive at the "wrong time," right before they're getting ready to deploy. Deployments, too, depend on world circumstances. My brother was on the recently-decommissioned USS John F. Kennedy, and he was "turned around" twice because of unrest in the Middle East (especially during the '73 Yom Kippur War, when a six-month deployment turned into ten).

I apologize for being so general, but there are so many factors that will play into the issues you've asked that it's next to impossible to give you a precise timeframe.

Answer 3

Depends on the school. I went to MM (machinist mate) A school in 1987-88 and it was 13 weeks long.

I have no idea what the deployment schedule for his ship will be. I doubt that he has orders to a ship as yet (if he has not even started A school), so he might end up in some other naval station than in Virginia.