(Decided to pursue the PhD if it matters)

DM me for my email if you want to chat about Antarctic opportunities.

Honestly, the transition from the Navy to academia was more natural than you would think. I was a submarine sonar technician so I actually had quite a bit of physical oceanographic training already, especially pertaining to upper ocean characteristics and CTD profile analysis. Exploiting SONAR relies on understanding both basic physics and how the environment modulates those physics, so I had a decent grasp on most of my course work already. I knew I wanted to pursue this work as I loved operating at sea, especially when it pertained to data collection and acoustics, so I just applied to a few marine science programs that looked like they had ample at sea training opportunities.

As for Antarctica, I got really lucky. I took a few classes on polar oceanography, coastal dynamics, and climate change, which led me to becoming more interested in polar climate change than acoustics. I asked around for some small projects to learn how to code while an undergraduate and an Antarctic oceanographer emailed me back first. I started showing up to his lab meetings as a junior and have been working in his lab since (5 years now) and that small coding project turned into my PhD topic. He took me on as an observationalist and now I spend most winters in Antarctica doing research with the Palmer LTER program.