Reflective Essay: The Turning Point In My Career

The Turning Point in My Career

In my time in the Navy I have had one supervisor that I could say really changed me. The first time meeting my Senior Chief was nothing more than a quick introduction of myself. Looking back at the time, to him I was just probably another young kid, fresh out of High School, who he had to keep out of trouble during our time together. I didn’t know it yet, but eventually this man would guide me and teach me things that would help me throughout my Naval career. I’ve learned a lot from his guidance and applied it to my job everyday so that I can teach other Sailors smart and safe practices. To this day, I have never met anyone like Senior Chief Aguillon in my Naval Career who had a bigger impact on it as he did.

As I began to prove myself within the division and making up for my mistake it was also met with jealousy from my peers. I was told by my peers that “only reason I was put in charge or got the added responsibility was because of Senior Chief”. It wasn’t always easy being put into leadership positions especially when I was still fairly new and had been in trouble no so long ago. I knew that as long as I stayed focused and did my job well in time I would earn the respect of my peers. My supervisors saw the hard work I would put in everyday, would not hear me complain of how bad the job was at times, and I was never late. Later I became the “go to guy” everyone could count on to get the work done. My Senior Chief supported me with everything I wanted to do. I may have been one of his favorite Sailors to work with, who probably got treated better than the other sailors. But that was because I always worked hard at everything assigned to me and I became very dependable when it came it completing task. As long as I kept studying and increasing my knowledge of my job I would always be put in a leadership role. By encouraging me to come out of my shell, take charge and prove that I could recover from my incident it gave me a lot of hope knowing that I could make this job into a