Psych Eval

C077/K051 Feb 21-Apr25 1990

Those of us who were originally to go nuke and had volunteered for sub duty had to undergo an initial psych evaluation. I think those who wanted to go EOD, Diver, and SEAL were sent as well.

For some reason, I recall having another round of vision tests. One guy who was there who had signed up for Navy Diver wore coke bottle glasses.

They asked him, “How the F are you going to be a diver with those glasses?”

“My recruiter told me I was OK,”

“Well, he F-ing lied to you.”

The guy was like 20/200 uncorrected. So, he had to get a different job. This evaluation was after we had our classification day. Wow, I am almost following an order. Anyway, we all get talked to about what we are about to do. We are all asked one more time, do you want to volunteer for sub/diver/EOD/SEALs. We all answer in the affirmative.

We are each given an evaluation to fill out, which had different sections. Some were actual questions. Other were complete the sentence. Word association.

Not sure if we had a time limit, but we are all spread out around the room, and we start to fill this out.
I remember a few of the “questions.”

Why did you join the Navy? What does the Navy mean to you?

Then some of the others were like single words. Our answer was to be what that word meant to us.
For example, some of the words included dogs, sex, ships.

So we answered. 
For sex, I put something like “is amazing.”

Ships, I probably answered, “are amazing feats in engineering.”
So, we go through this, and when we are all finished, we sit outside a Psychiatrist's office. Each one goes in, and he reviews some of your answers. Some people he spoke to for a while. Others were in and out. I was in his office for about 15 minutes. He looks over answers and askes questions.
“So, you enjoy sex?”

“Yes, sir.”

“Care to elaborate?”
“Well, I am engaged, and we have a daughter together. And we enjoy each other a good deal.”

“OK, good.”

“Like engineering?”

“Yes, sir, I went to a tech school before I joined for mechanical design.”

He asked me some other questions which I answered. I finished and left. “Qualified.”

The rest of the group went into his office and came out. When we finished, we all went back to our compartment. Those of us who went were talking about the experience. One of the group was really mad. It seems he was disqualified for sub duty because of one fo his answers.

Dogs are what got him. He wrote down a one-word answer. Suck.

As the doctor reviewed his answers, he saw this and asked him about it.

“Don’t like dogs.”
“No, sir, I hate them.”

“Really, why?”
“One of the MF’ers bit me when I was younger. I hate the F’ers.”

Disqualified.
I think one other in the group was disqualified. Everyone else was qualified at the level anyway. I know if we wanted to stay I subs we had longer to go to get there.

Go figure, not a darn picture to find for something like that.