Mr. Tark Talks mainly deal with Career Exploration

Hello, welcome. Today we have a real treat with us. We have the Navy with us today and the person farthest over here, this is Petty Officer Hawkins. And then right next to me is YNSR Barron, both with the United States Navy. We'll start with Petty Officer Hawkins. Please tell us a little bit about yourself and the Navy. Thank you very much. So my name is Barris Hawkins. I've been in the Navy for 14 years. I'm a graduate of Park High, graduating in 08, so I am from Racine as well. I ended up joining at the age of 21, a little bit later than some people do, and I ended up going to the nuclear field. So the Navy is one of the only fields, or it's the only field that actually has a nuclear operations, a nuclear power system of any of the branches, and that's one of the fields I do. You wanna give a little description of your job? Yeah, I work as a yeoman in administration. So we manage basically the entire administration part of the Navy, but we can do almost any other administrative work, such as like an LS or a PS. We do everything. The ship or the Navy can't run without us. There you go. So what does LS and PS mean? LS means logistics specialist. They deal with supply and demand, basically. A PS is a personnel specialist. They deal with someone's paychecks. We can do their job, but they can't do our job. There you go, nice. All right, so Petty Officer Hawkins, can you tell us a little bit more about some of the other options that are in the Navy? Sure, so there are over 130 different career fields you can get into if there is a job outside of the military that someone wants to do. We have a career field for them in the military. We can get them college credits. We can pay for any college that they wanna get for degrees, and we can get them experience on the job, which a lot of jobs want you to have two to four years of experience when you are applying for them. So we can get you all of that in as little as three to four years of time within the Navy, and it's at no cost to you, and you get paid the entire time. So there's a lot of different options. They're going all the way from aviation mechanics to cooks to lawyers to doctors, any fields that you wanna be in. Thank you. So YNSR, Barrett, what are your plans for the Navy? How long, what's the outlook for you? I plan on staying in for the full 20 years as I want to become a senior, too. Awesome, well, that's great. What were your experiences when you applied and when you were going through a boot camp? When I went through boot camp, it was all like a mental test. Like, yeah, there were physical parts of boot camp, but most of it was just the, can you handle this long enough kind of test. And if you couldn't handle the stress, then people got separated from the Navy. Awesome, and what were your experiences when you talked to your recruiter for the first time and the process to actually get to boot camp? I felt my recruiters were pretty honest with me with almost everything that I asked. With the questions about boot camp, what we did, and the things that are going to be afterwards, they were mainly honest to me about all that. So, yeah, I say I had good recruits. Awesome, and how's your experience going so far? So far, it's pretty good. Great. After this, I'm basically going to Japan. Oh, man, all right, and what are you gonna be doing in Japan specifically? I'm not sure yet, they haven't told me anything. Oh, well, that's exciting. We have over 100 different bases across the world, some in Japan, we have four in Japan, we have some in Guam, we have some over in the Mediterranean, such as in Germany, and different ports of call as well, over 1,000 different ports of call with over a dozen different countries we are aligned with. As an example, I've been to Brazil, I've been to Norway, I've been to the Philippines, I've been to Beijing. We've been all over the world, and that's just some of the places I have been to. So if you want to see the world, the Navy's a great place to go. Any final thoughts? We'll start with you, Petty Officer Hawkins. So final thoughts, I would say is, it's hard to take that first step, but as soon as you take that first step, it'll be the one decision you never regret in life. All right, thank you. I might say, like, with joining the Navy, there will be days in boot camp, and even afterwards that you feel like you made a mistake, but then there'll be those moments where you're reminded why you joined the Navy, and why you're staying in the Navy, but a lot of times you are. Well, thank you, gentlemen. We appreciate you. Thank you for taking your time to come to St. Catharines and talk a little bit with us, and good luck in the future, both of you. Thank you. Thank you.