I got the phone call I’ve been waiting so long for today! My Final Select letter has arrived and everything is squared away for me to swear in to the United States Navy!

There hasn’t been any posts since my Professionally Recommended post, and that has been on purpose. There hasn’t really been too much to report without me sounding too whiny, haha.

Over the past four months, since my pro-rec, I have been in constant contact with my Officer Recruiter and my Processor. They have been very responsive and very helpful in assuring me that they are doing everything in their power to move the process from pro-rec to final select as quickly as it possibly can move.

The major hold up was with opening my security investigation. Apparently the SF86 had some additional questions between the time I submitted it with my original application and the time they were needing to open my investigation. I am not sure if this was due specifically because my need of a Top Secret clearance, or if this was a change for Secret clearances as well. This one setback sort of snowballed into a big headache, though. Once they were unable to open my investigation, my profile went into some sort of limbo state where items such as my finger prints were put in a giant file with other finger prints that were not attached to any specific investigation that was open at the time.

There was also a lack of communication between the people working with the security investigations and my OR. The system would say that my SF86 was submitted correctly, but the people would say that it is wrong, but we wouldn’t know exactly what was wrong, or only partially what was wrong – or rather, missing. Then when going to change the application, since the system thought it was already submitted correctly, it would not let us back in to make modifications.

Really it was just a very slow process. One thing would get done, and in order to get in touch with the right people it would then take a few days. Multiply this by the number of times a specific person needed to be contacted, and you can see why it has been a few days shy of 4 months since I heard news of my professional recommendation.

My next step is to swear in. I am planning on signing the papers and raising my right hand a week from today, next Wednesday, October 7th, 2009. I was told that I will receive backpay to the date that is on my final select letter, which I assume is today or whenever the letter was put in the mail.

I am very excited to be ‘officially’ in the Navy. I am also very excited about starting my ‘real’ Navy career after graduating from school next Summer.

Time to increase the PT …