Glad you’re enjoying the lack of resonsibility and that you made it home, in one piece, humour intact. My blessings and my gratefulness for the boys and girls in the sandbox and the ones that serve elsewhere.

It may sound selfish, but from what I have heard (from the vets, God bless them) I pray I won’t get posted to Iraq.

And I certainly an empathize with you. As a PhD candidate I have a conflicted time negotiating the various levels of socially appropriate language and locating myself in that hieararchy. I will be graduting with my PhD shortly. As a graduate student I am at the apex of the educational hiearchy but I’m still not a faculty member (i.e. I’m not employeed yet) and so I do not possess the imprimature of acceptance. Does this make me less of a Doctor? Not educationally, but some might say not having a job which indicates a university’s willingness to stamp you with approval might suggest something about my other qualifications (like personality or teaching ability rather than research)…and I soon learned another interesting observation.

Everyone with a PhD isn’t the same. Yes we are all called Doctor so and so but having just graduated compared with someone who has 20 years of post graduate professional experience is a big difference but we both would be called the same thing (althought I would still feel inferior professionally, despite the great equalizer of our education).

I recommend doing what makes you feel most confortable given the social milieu in which you find yourself. Continuing to use the respectful (and I would argue much more appropriate) Dr. so and so is preferably to you feeling uncomfortable when speaking with that person. First you will always be correct and second, they ARE used to it, even if it doesn’t occur as frequently in their current position.

I am 28 years old and probably around the same age as you are, yet with being a PhD would make me significantly higher rank (I’m told by a relentless group of recruiters that I start off as a Major) in the military (Clinical Psychology) and would certainly be problematic for me. I can’t imagine how uncomfortable that could make me but we are adaptable creatures! Hang in there!

For the most part the people around me have learned what I mean with them. Sometimes they even pick things up. “Wilco” (”I understand and WILl COmply”) and a few others.

Our networking folk now use what they think is an phonetic alphabet and I find their word choice vastly amusing sometimes.

Roger that, beaucoup, riki-tik, stand-by and other Marinese still form an important part of my vocabulary. Roger means a lot more than Ok.

Some of the annoying habits/mannerisms that I’ve picked up are thanking people, selling hello and goodbye. But apathy remains strong.

I was somewhat able to get around the social naming conventions by coupling a person’s first and last names together when referring to them in the third person, and simply avoiding using their name when talking to them directly.

You’ll figure it out over time, but nothing beats being devoid of responsibility. Till this day I shun it.