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The Academy Insider Podcast - Your Guide to The Naval Academy Experience
The mission of Academy Insider is to guide, serve, and support Midshipmen, future Midshipmen, and their families. Through the perspective of a community of former graduates and Naval Academy insiders, this podcast will help you learn about life at the United States Naval Academy in Annapolis. Through our shared experiences, Academy Insider guides families through the anxiety and frustration caused by lack of understanding, misinformation, and confusion. This platform is designed to better relationships between midshipmen and their loved ones. This podcast is not affiliated with the United States Naval Academy, the United States Navy or Department of Defense. The thoughts and opinions are exclusively those of your host and his guests.
The Academy Insider Podcast - Your Guide to The Naval Academy Experience
#115 VGEP explained: Start Your Masters while at the Naval Academy
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Ever wondered how you could earn a master's degree while still at the Naval Academy? Meet the Voluntary Graduate Education Program (VGEP) - a hidden gem that most midshipmen never hear about unless someone specifically tells them it exists.
In this episode, I sit down with Karl Marvil, a Surface Warfare Officer currently stationed in Naples, Italy, who completed the VGEP program at Georgetown University. Karl shares the inside scoop on this unique opportunity that allows academically strong midshipmen to start graduate school during their final semester at Navy.
What Makes VGEP Different from Other Graduate Programs
Unlike the highly competitive IGEP program reserved for the top 10% of the class, VGEP offers a more accessible path to graduate education. We explore the specific requirements, including the need for a 3.0 GPA, completing your bachelor's degree in three and a half years, and finding a program within driving distance of Annapolis.
Karl walks us through his experience balancing midshipman life with graduate coursework, from carpooling to Georgetown with his cohort to managing military duties alongside evening classes. You'll discover how the Academy supports VGEP participants and the unique flexibility this program offers.
Strategic Considerations for Future Midshipmen
We discuss the critical decision-making process around course validation and how it impacts your ability to participate in programs like VGEP. Karl provides honest perspectives on when validation makes sense and when it might create unnecessary academic pressure during plebe year.
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The mission of Academy Insider is to guide, serve, and support Midshipmen, future Midshipmen, and their families.
This podcast is independently produced and reflects the views and opinions of its creators. It is not officially affiliated with, endorsed by, or representative of the United States Naval Academy or its affiliates.
Grant Vermeer your host is the person who started it all. He is the founder of Academy Insider and the host of The Academy Insider podcast. He was a recruited athlete which brought him to Annapolis where he was a four year member of the varsity basketball team. He was a cyber operations major and commissioned into the Cryptologic Warfare Community. He was stationed at Fort Meade and supported the Subsurface Direct Support mission.
He separated from the Navy in 2023 and now owns The Vermeer Group, a residential real estate company that matches service academy families with trusted real estate teams all across the country. Text (650) 282-1964 with any real estate questions.
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Framing Today’s Focus: VJEP
SPEAKER_00Hey everyone, and welcome back to the Academy Incenter Podcast. I'm so excited about today's episode, we're talking all about graduate education. And there are a lot of programs we've already talked about from FSEP to NPS, things you can do in the fleet. You know, we've talked about the Marshall Scholarship and the Rhodes Scholarship and some of these incredible, like actual scholarship programs, but today is all about VGP, the voluntary graduate education program, and I'm joining Carl Marvel to have this discussion. It's super cool. I originally was planning on this episode being a full episode of both VG and his time in FDMF, the Ford Employed Naval Force. The first part of the episode was so good I made an I made an impromptu executive decision to be like, this deserves to be its own episode. And so this episode that you're gonna hear today is all about V Jeff, and we're gonna be releasing a new episode of Falloon and it's a separate episode to talk about his time doing FDNF, the Ford Employed Naval Forces. So looking forward to it. I hope you enjoyed this episode. If you have any questions, let me know. Otherwise, enjoy the listening.
Meet Carl: Path To USNA And SWO
SPEAKER_00Correct? Yeah, I'm here in the Naples, Italy. Heck yeah, dude. So excited for you to come talk to us a little bit today about the VJET program, but also about FDNF. And we're gonna define what that means a little bit later in the episode. So if you're hearing that acronym and you have no idea what it means, bear with us. We'll get there. But before we do, if you just mind providing a quick introduction about who you are, how you ended up at the Naval Academy, like where you grew up, and a little bit about your career at the Naval Academy and into the Navy now today.
SPEAKER_03Yeah, well, thanks a lot for having me, Gren. It's a great opportunity to be here on Academy Insider, huge fan, and you know, love the opportunity to give back to the Naval Academy community and future midshipmen. So, yeah, like you said, my name's Carl Marville. I grew up in Miami, Florida, you know, came from a family that that had some background in service across all branches, you know, at all at all levels, different periods of time. And when I was a junior in high school, I got the invitation to do one of those candidate visit weekends at Navy, and it lined up with my spring break. And, you know, I was already looking at the DMV area for college. I've always been a big fan. So, you know, I did the candidate visit weekend, and I was like, hey, this this place is awesome. You know, you have a lot of like-minded people who want to be leaders and and want to serve their country, and it's a great academic institution, so I I decided to pursue it from there. And at the Naval Academy, I was a political science major and I played on the club water polo team while I was there. So that was a really cool experience. And I was a part of seventh company, which at the time was the Mustangs, but I think that's changed now with the expansion to 36th companies. Yeah. But yeah, it was it was a great time, and then which you know I'll go into with the VJP program. I started that in the last semester of my first year, and that was a really, really cool experience. So I'm glad that you know I could talk about it today and and let people know what that's like because it's one of those unique things that unless someone tells you about it, you might not even know it exists. I I had no idea that it existed until I showed up and my academic advisor sat me down and she was like, Hey, you you should look into this. And I was like, Yeah, it's it's not bad. And and and and yeah, from from there, commissioned in May of 2018.
Why Split The Episode From FDNF
SPEAKER_03I finished up the VJEP program at grad school by December of 2018, and then that's when I that's when I hit the fleet. I'm a surface warfare officer and I've been FDNF my whole career so far. So I did my first tour in Rota Spain on the USS Porter. I was there for about two and a half years. Then I went over to Yakuza, Japan, and I was on a cruiser, the USS Robert Smalls for a year and a half. Yeah, and then I I rolled into shore duty, and I've been in Naples, Italy now working for uh Sixth Fleet. And I've been here for about a year and a half, and it's just all experiences have been awesome. Yeah, dude. That's so cool.
SPEAKER_00But again, what's so funny is again, my experience was join the Navy, see Maryland, right? Like you really got the join the Navy, see the world uh side of the house, but it was a conscious decision you made, right? And I'm excited to like dive a little bit more into that and your decision to choose, again, the FDNF life, which again, I'll kind of, you know, for the Academy Insider audience, when we say FDNF, we're talking about forward deployed naval forces. That's what the acronym breaks out to forward deployed naval forces. And again, you'll hear a lot about quote unquote deployment. You'll hear when people who are stationed in San Diego or stationed in Norfolk, they go on deployment for six or seven months. But when you're FDNF, you are living abroad. You are stationed abroad, and then on top of that, you're usually out to see a high, high percentage of the time, right? Like you are, you are constantly operational. And so super excited to talk with Carl about all of these experiences.
What VJEP Is And Who Qualifies
SPEAKER_00But the first thing that I do want to jump into is this idea of VJEP, another acronym that may be confusing for some folks. So if you don't mind just like breaking out what VJEP is, and then a little bit about your experience and a little bit about the program, and I'll kind of pester in some questions as we're going through it.
SPEAKER_03Yeah, absolutely. So VJEP stands for Voluntary Graduate Education Program. And, you know, as I mentioned in my intro, it's it's a unique program that has a bunch of caveats. So it's important to kind of understand all the details that go into it so that you can be best informed and see if it's something that that is worth your while or that you're interested in. And, you know, when when you think about graduate school at the Naval Academy, a lot of people think, okay, I'll do my four years at Navy, I'll graduate, and then I'll, you know, pursue a graduate degree afterwards. And I think that that program is called iJEP. And it it's usually the people who are competing in like the top 10% of the class, you know, they're very academically gifted and they're receiving scholarships from some of these, you know, higher education institutions, you know, all over the world. We have people that go to the UK and and and everywhere. And with VJEP, it's a little bit different. So the voluntary graduate education program, you need to have a minimum of a 3.0 GPA, or as we like to call it a Navy Cooper. You need to have a uh B in conduct, and and you have to have completed all of your classes for your bachelor's degree by the end of fall of first a year. So essentially, you're doing a four-year naval academy program in three and a half years. Now, at first that might sound a little bit intimidating, but you can do that with the combination of validating your classes. Yes. So before I kind of go in a little bit more into explaining that three and a half years getting your academy done, I'll talk about some of the other points first. So the master's program, it has to be a master's program that's within the DMV area. It needs to be driving distance. And that makes sense because you're starting it in the last semester of your first year.
SPEAKER_00So you're living on the yard, right? Like you're still living in Bangkok Hall and driving the class.
SPEAKER_03Yeah, absolutely. I I would say that one of the perks is that in spring semester of your first year, you get a reserved parking spot. We all know parking's a premium at AV. So you do get an Alpha parking. Yeah. So yeah, you're you're living in the hall. You're so you're still attending two classes in that last semester. You're doing your PE class and you're doing your your JO practicum. So whatever community you'll go to, and that's very manageable because all these master's degrees, they tend to do the courses either in the afternoon or at or at night. So again, school within driving distance in the DMV area. The other thing is that the the master's degree has to be related to your bachelor's degree. So I studied political science. I had to do VJP related to political science. So in my particular case, I went for the security studies program at Georgetown University, and that's essentially an international relations type degree. But I had friends who, for example, studied economics, they did VJEP in the finance master's over at Johns Hopkins. And then my friends that did engineering, they did their degree over at UMD. So the the other part of that is that your VJEP program is taking a two-year master's degree and condensing it into one year, which again, that also sounds a little bit intimidating. But when you finish the crucible that is the Naval Academy, you're already used to taking a lot more classes per semester than the average college student, right?
Compressing A Two‑Year Master’s Into One
SPEAKER_03So at least, and I'll give you the example of the Georgetown degree. It was a two-year program, four semesters. You did three classes per semester, each a three credit class. So now with Vija, instead of four semesters, I'm doing three semesters because I'm doing a spring, a summer, and a fall. And I'm doing four classes per semester. So it's really not that bad because when you think about it, I'm now taking less classes than I did at Navy.
SPEAKER_01Yeah, but say compared to your Navy experience, what does it say?
SPEAKER_03Yeah, right. It's it's nice and it's all related to something that you're actually interested in, you know, because you know, we all took classes at the Naval Academy that we may have not been as strong in or as necessarily interested in, but now you're doing something that's related to your degree. So I loved my political science classes. I they were they went a lot smoother for me than than some of my engineering or required math and science classes. And now I get to do a master's degree where I don't have to worry about some intro-level chemistry or physics, I'm just doing you know political science. That's what you like doing. Yeah, exactly.
SPEAKER_01No more thermo, no more chemistry, no more. Yeah, yeah, yeah.
SPEAKER_02We're killing.
SPEAKER_03Yeah. So uh and then the last thing I will say about that. So, really, if you think about it, it it's a it's a really cool opportunity because it's only taking up seven months of your active duty time. So you go January to May, you're living in the hall, you're commuting, you're you're doing your degree, then you commission, and when you commission, your your first set of orders is your TAD to whatever department at the academy. So I was technically TAD to the political science department. Got it. But I got to live out in town, I was receiving BAH. Annapolis BAH? I I was receiving Annapolis BAH since that's where I was stationed, but I was living in Washington, D.C. Absolutely. And that's totally fine. It you know, obviously the DC BH is a little bit more, but you know, you can manage it. And what most people do is they live with roommates and stuff and you know, make it a good time. You know, with usually with your cohort that that you went through, I was very fortunate. I had three other midshipmen. So it was a total of four of us that did the Georgetown degree together. So in our in our spring semester, we were commuting, carpooling every day, the four of us in one vehicle. And then when we went out, you know, a few of us lived together and and and were out there. So that was really cool. Uh but I think the biggest thing that uh people need to be conscious of with the VJEP program is that you do have to pay for it out of pocket. So that is that is a big asterisk, you know, because with iJEP, everyone's receiving some sort of scholarship. And there's also graduate programs like Bowman Scholar and whatnot, where you go to NPS straight out of the Naval Academy. With VJEP, you got to pay for it out of pocket. So that's something that you you need to take into consideration. Uh I, for example, used my uh my student loan, the career starter loan that USAA gives you because I thought, hey, you know, it's worthwhile to invest in in my education. And the way I saw it was this was a great institution. It's one of the strongest degrees in the world for international relations. And I also wanted to get into that network as well. You know, we talk about the Naval Academy network, but
Costs, Funding, And School Partnerships
SPEAKER_03every institution has has a network. And if you're talking about service, you know, with military service, there's a lot of people that that stay in DC through working in the Pentagon, you know, there's people that transition into civilian jobs, and I think like the DMV area is a really good spot to have a network in as well. So that that was something I took into consideration. But the other thing, the other part of it too, is a lot of these institutions, they they have they've already agreed previously to to provide you that four that two-year degree in in one year and three semesters. So they they want to preserve that relationship with the Naval Academy. They want that relationship to continue. In the case of Georgetown, they've been doing VJP with USANA since 1985. You know, so so there's people that that continuously do that. So they understand that the Navy doesn't give us any funding. So they do work with you and offer some some sorts of scholarships and financial aid. So that was nice because that definitely helped with the tuition. Yeah.
SPEAKER_00Yeah. No, that's super helpful. Because that was gonna be my next question. And it wasn't on the outline, so I apologize to put you on the spot. Well, but it like when it comes to it, like are you able to utilize other Navy avenues for that stuff, like TA, tuition assistance and other kind of things? Like, did you ever, or do you know, like, are there other ways to chip away at the tuition that would exist, you know, going there?
SPEAKER_03I think I think with other Navy avenues, it's a little bit tougher just because you're so junior. Uh you know, like for example, that for at least for Naval Academy graduates, RGI bill doesn't kick in until much later. Yeah, right. So some people take that calculus in it. And I I have many friends who within the surface community, they did their first and second divo tour and then they went to Georgetown for their shore duty and they got that paid for because they either did the graduate education program as part of talent management or they started using tuition assistance. But I think I think the tuition assistance also has some time that you need to kick in first in active duty. And then when you use the TA, you know there's a little bit of buyback there. Yeah, that makes sense. Yeah, definitely with VJEP. You know, we I I remember, you know, we this, I would say it was probably the most uh the most productive meeting I've ever had economically, where I put on my SDBs, I drove over to Georgetown and I said, Hey, think thanks a lot for accepting me. You know, I really want to be in your program, but but I need help. You know, this is a expensive price tag. And and they they were willing to work with me. And like I said, their biggest thing, and this is what they told me, is they want to create a community for their master's degree, and they love the relationship that USNA has with Georgetown. So they worked with us and all four of us received, you know, a partial scholarship. Yeah. And then, you know, we we had to pay for the risk. But looking back, you know, it was a great opportunity. I'm so happy that I did it. And if I hadn't done it then, the Navy would want me to get my master's right now. So thanks to the fact that I did Georgetown then, I'm now able to live in Naples, Italy, and be doing a completely different job that's giving me just more experience and and broadening my horizons. See, that that's a big thing.
SPEAKER_00Again, I what's what's really interesting that when you focus yourself just on the Naval Academy experience, it can be different. But when you look at the Naval Academy experiences and opportunities, a stepping stone to give yourself more opportunity in your Navy career, like then it takes on a whole different form. Because that's
Daily Life: Classes, Duties, And Flex
SPEAKER_00really interesting. Because, like you're saying, nowadays, in order to promote to 04 and definitely to 05, having a master's degree is almost a requirement. I think it is like actually a requirement in many communities, right? And so if you're gonna be in that spot where you know you're either gonna have to take a full two years to go get your master's in the Navy at the expense of potentially a shore tour in Naples, in Rhoda, in Yakuska, whatever the case is, or you're gonna have to do a master's on your own time while you're doing your own job, right? Which can be really difficult, especially around the time you're probably doing it in the time frame where you're starting to have young kids, right? Like that can be really difficult when you have an opportunity to basically get your master's degree while you're still a midshipman at the Naval Academy, and then for your first couple months after, right? Like really convenient and cool timing. And then two, uh you mentioned something that I just want to talk about real quick, which is about the GI Bill. So for anyone who's listening, midshipmen who are listening, for parents who are listening, because the US government is paying for our education to the Naval Academy, our GI bill doesn't start, like our counter for the GI bill doesn't start until our initial Service Academy obligation is complete. And so your like technically for the GI bill, your days don't count until your whole five years is complete. So you would need to, and again, normally it's like 36 months, three full years to get 100% of the GI bill. So you would actually need to do like eight years on active duty to actually then get your GI bill for graduate education or education for your kids at that point, because your counter doesn't start until your service academy obligation has ended. And so again, we again, me as someone who got out like just shy of the six-year mark, I have like 40 or 50 percent of my GI bill for being in like a hunt more than 180 days in the eyes of the Navy, right? And so, but I don't have a hundred percent of my GI bill. And that was because of like the time frame that I got, which is an interesting distinction. Now back to you, Carl, which what on this side is when you're going to school there, what's your life like as a midshipman? Because you're driving to Georgetown a lot, like you're going down to DC a lot. Two two things. One, which is do you have anything to do on the yard? Right? Like I know you have like normally we have like a practicum class in our senior year or kind of capstone. Like, how often are you in naval academy courses? And then two, is like, are you in civvies when you go to class, or do you have to be in uniform? Like, what's your day-to-day look like in that spring semester of your first year?
SPEAKER_03Yeah, I think so. Like I mentioned, you do have to do the practicum class, but that was like a two-credit class. You you go twice a week and you do have to you do have to do the PE still, which you know, that the PE classes as a first year are the best because you get to do whichever sport you're interested in.
SPEAKER_02Yeah, I was like, Yeah, I went golfing as well. Yeah, it was it was awesome. So I was like, yeah, let me let me take in a quick couple swings before I go over to Georgetown.
SPEAKER_03But yeah, it was it was great. So I st we still had the you know, your basic military duties, like morning quarters formation, noon meal formation, that kind of thing. But outside of that, the time I spent during the day was was doing my readings and and the stuff that I needed to do for my for my classes. Because like I mentioned, the classes tended to be in the afternoon. So around around four o'clock, we'd get into cities, we'd jump in the car, and we'd drive over to DC. Because I think I think all our classes started around 6 30. So we had to leave at four just because of the the traffic.
Validation Strategy And Planning Early
SPEAKER_03But you know, for for my my you know, classmates that were either going to Johns Hopkins or UMD or some of the other areas that are a little bit closer, you know, their schedules were a little bit different, and it was like that. You know, sometimes we I think the need USNA does a really good job of supporting the VJP experience. So there were times where you know it'd be a Friday and the the master's degree, they do a lot of events, they do a lot of networking events because the average age, I was like the youngest person in my master's degree, because the average age of everyone is about four years that they've been in the workforce. So they're they're already in like their 27s to 30s. And the reason why they're in in the afternoon is because these people still have full-time jobs, so they're going to classes afterwards because they want to increase you know their their professional education. Sure. So with that being said, you know, there was a lot of networking events, a lot of activities that that we had. And anytime I had those activities, I just had to tell my company officer, and it was like no questions asked. So, you know, they had they had events on Friday afternoons. Sometimes we had parades on Fridays, but I said, hey, you know, I tell my company officer, hey sir, I have this event here at Georgetown. You know, I'd really like to go. And it was always like, Yeah, absolutely, you're doing the masters, go do it. And then sometimes we'd also be, you know, taps, we'd have to be back, like what is it by 11 or something? We'd have to sign. Yeah. And you know, sometimes we after classes, we ran late because we either had, you know, someone speaking to us or we had a networking event or something. And all we had to do was just text the CDO and say, hey, I'm gonna be coming in after taps because I'm at a VJEP event. You know, I'll I'll I'll show you a message when I get back to the hall. And that was completely allowed. And I think the other cool thing about it too is, and and this was a Old mid-rex instruction from from the 80s, and it hadn't been updated even through the time that I was I was there doing VJEP in 2018. But it it said that if your VJEP program um had any like holidays or or leave periods or whatever, we were allowed to do that as well. So Georgetown was a Jesuit school, they had Easter break. Easter break didn't exist at Navy, but I was allowed to take Easter break off. So I had a four-day week and I had a Friday and a Monday off. And yeah, I routed.
SPEAKER_01I I bet 99% of midshipmen had no idea that instruction existed, and you like routed and put up after your four-day, and they were like, Well, dang. I mean, yeah, you're right.
SPEAKER_03And to to to parallel that was during the Naval Academy spring break, I had classes at Georgetown. So I had to I had to go to Georgetown, but then I was able to take Georgetown spring break. Makes sense. And yeah, you know, obviously when you when you take those times off, you might miss your practicum class, but it's an excused absence. You know, because they they want to support you with the program. So I I think that that was good. So cool, dude. I think the the last point that I I haven't mentioned is for Vija, there's 20 spots available every year. And just to give you an idea, in the class of 18, a motivating 18 people applied for it.
SPEAKER_01Yeah.
SPEAKER_03And I think I think all 18 got it. So you know, it's 18 out of out of out of 20. So it's with all those caveats in mind, you know, those are the kind of things that you need to take into consideration. But I know we mentioned this at first, so the whole getting your semester your last semester over with so that you could have it freed up for VJ. You know, that's that's definitely something that when you go into the academy, you kind of already have to have to be thinking. Yeah. So when I was in my first semester and or actually was my second semester, because we had declared our our majors, and I said, Hey, I want a major of political science. They assigned me my political science ACA advisor. And we sat down for our first you know meeting. And you know, she looked at how my grades were going from the first semester, and then she looked at the classes that I had validated. So as
Tradeoffs: Easier Plebe Year Or VJEP
SPEAKER_03a as a liberal arts major, you were required to take four semesters of a language. I happened to be a Spanish speaker, so I was able to validate those four semesters through a test at the academy. And then I was lucky enough that I had two AP classes from high school. One was the U.S. Congress class and the other one was a bio class that I was able to validate as a free elective. So I essentially, through validation, was able to get rid of six classes, which was de facto a semester. Yep. So that's when my AC advisor said, Hey, you know, I have this guy right here. I want you to meet him. He's a Marine. He just finished the VGEP program at Georgetown. You know, sit down with him. I see that you have these classes validated. Because what a lot of people do at the academy is when they when they have so many classes validated, their their thought is, oh, I could do a double major. And that and that's a good thought because there are a lot of majors that kind of overlap, so you're not overloading too much. But in her case, she was kind of like, hey, if this is something you want to do, forget the double major, yeah, like look into this program. And I spoke with the second lieutenant. He had told me, you know, how great the experience had been, how how much he learned, how much he really enjoyed the teachers and everyone. So at that point, so it was it was a conscious decision already, you know, kind of in my in my plea beer, where I said, okay, this is something I want to pursue. It's not that I closed the door to everything else because I said, hey, you know, who knows how academics go. Maybe the iJub thing can still be open to me. And uh, and and the third thing, too, is I was like, hey, you know, if for whatever reason it doesn't work out, I can st I can still pursue a double major. You know, I have that extra semester that's free. So so on that topic of validation, you know, I would say for for incoming midshipment, it's definitely something to take into consideration because obviously the the Nail Academy is a rigorous institution. If you decide to be like a history or an English or a political science major and you can validate a language, I think that's one that's like, you know, that that's one that I would say absolutely go for, right? But you know, there is a calculus where you say, hey, if I if I come in here and I validate, you know, two semesters of calculus or maybe two semesters of of chemistry, you know, now I'm taking physics and calc three as a plebe. That might be a little bit too much. So yeah. So that's definitely something to consider, especially like you said, like you were an athlete there. It's not it's not easy balancing being a plebe, taking all those classes, and having to be a varsity athlete. So in that case, you know, you might consider, okay, maybe I don't want to validate these classes because there's something that I can take as a as a way to you know set this, set the tone for the rest of my time at the academy. 100%.
SPEAKER_00I look, I I I wholeheartedly agree with that. It's something that's really, it's really interesting, right? Because again, I would say part of this conversation is not telling you that you need to validate. We just want to highlight what opportunities exist if you go through the process and you validate as many courses as possible, right? Because these things are cool. When I showed up to the Naval Academy, right, and all this is this is why I love getting to do this and having you come on and share your story, because all the only experience I knew when I was going through it was I showed up to like the basketball team hosted a dinner like the night before I Day, right? Like we all got together and the coaches were there and some of the other classmen were there, and the coaches were like, whatever you do, like don't validate any classes, right?
Accountability, TAPS, And Support
SPEAKER_00Like, don't validate any classes because if you validate classes, your plebe year is gonna be harder, right? Like if you're smart enough to validate a class today, it means you're gonna be able to pass that class during the academic year, right? Instead of like you're saying, look, if you go ahead and you validate calc one and now you're in calc two instead of calc one your first semester, like it's gonna be much harder. Same thing. If you validate chemistry and now you're taking physics instead of chemistry, which you already know, right? Like it's gonna be harder. But at the same time, right, like you're saying is if you don't validate, you put yourself in a tough spot to take advantage of some of these really cool opportunities that exist in Annapolis, whether that be double majoring or whether that be participating in the VJET program. And, you know, and I would say your major selection matters here too, because you may validate four semesters of Spanish, right? And I validated three of Spanish, but as a as a cyber major, as a group two major, like it didn't really matter because I didn't take any language classes like in my matrix. Like it wasn't a part of my major's matrix. And so like it didn't really actually help me get ahead in any case. And so again, all these things wrap into what it's it's just important, right? Like it's just cool that we have this platform now for people to start thinking about this and considering what they actually want out of their experience. Because if you know you're someone, right, and especially if you're an athlete or other things and you're like, I just need plebe year to like be as smooth as I can make it, then yeah, like maybe not validating could be a good thing for you. But at the same time, if you're looking at this and you're like, man, I could get a master's degree while I'm freaking at the academy, like start it while I'm at the academy and you know have a master's degree by six months after graduation, then yeah, then paying attention to this stuff is important and putting yourself in a position to take advantage of some of these opportunities is important. Because not everyone's gonna be a road scholar. Not everyone's gonna be a Marshall scholar. Actually, the majority of you aren't, right?
Wrap Up And Tease For FDNF Part Two
SPEAKER_00If you have a 3-2 or a 3-3 and still have the opportunity to go get a master's immediately after graduation and not really tack on additional service or like all these things, like you're putting yourself in a really cool spot to get that education very early on, right? And and that a lot of that comes back to your validation of exams, to be able to like take that going into plead summer. And so, again, lots of really cool stuff, lots going on. The the last thing that I want to talk about here, really quick, you know, you mentioned funny enough, like, oh, I just got to text the CDO. For any parents who are listening, the CDO is it stands for company duty officer. And the company duty officer of the CDO is like the first class midshipman representative who's on duty for that day to basically be the representative of the company officer after hours, right? They're the ones who are taking the accountability reports, passing everything up to the brigade, because literally every single night, every single night in the brigade of midshipmen, they have to send an accountability report up to the brigade commander and basically up to the commandant saying every midshipman in the brigade is accounted for and like uh okay, right? And that happens every single day. And so again, that starts at the company level with the CDO. They'll put a sheet up and say, like, hey, this is TAPS. I don't know what TAPS stands for, but it's at the end of the day, you got to go and you got to sign a piece of
Closing Notes And Listener CTA
SPEAKER_00paper acknowledging the fact that you are alive and back on your company area, like in your room. And so again, this idea of like calling the CDO or shooting the CDO a text saying, hey, I'm gonna be late, class got out late, again, that's just to let people know that like you're alive and accounted for, and that's something big that's going on with them within the brigade every single night. And so, dude, this has been such a cool discussion about VJP. I think I'm actually I'm making this call on the fly, which I love. We're gonna wrap this up because I'm gonna turn it into its own episode. I mean, this is so good, like it's gonna go into its own episode. You and I are gonna continue recording. And for everyone who's listening, you're gonna hear a whole nother episode about FDNF, which is the Ford Deployed Naval Forces. Stand by for a part two on that. But dude, thank you so much for talking about Gijet because I think this is an important super important, really cool perspective on that, and I appreciate it. Awesome. Yeah, heck yeah. Thank you everyone for listening. I hope you have a good day and really appreciate it. Thank you so much for listening to this episode of the Academy Insider Podcast. I really hope you liked it, enjoyed it, and learned something during this time. If you did, please feel free to like and subscribe or leave a comment about the episode. We really appreciate it to hear your feedback about everything and continue to make Academy Insider an amazing service that guides, serves, and supports midshipmen, future midshipmen, and their families. Thank you.
