If you do decide to join , I would recommend submarines . You get to actually cook things . You will probably work much more than if you went surface but that ' s not always a bad thing . Underway you will primarily have responsibility for 1 meal per day , and help clean up and prep for the next meal . You have a huge impact on the crew as well . I always have a shitty afternoon when I can ' t get seconds or the desert is shitty oatmeal raisin cookies . Inport you will work pretty normal hours unless it ' s your duty day , then you get to work normal hours , cook dinner , clean the galley , sleep , wakeup , cook breakfast , and clean breakfast and then work a normal day . Your cranks new guys from other divisions will do all the dishes seawolf or some of the dishes 688 ohio . Not sure what cranks do on a Virginia class but I imagine they do 90 % of the dishes there too . Plus you get submarine pay and usually better barracks compared to the surface folks . Some surface ships will make you live onboard . Not a thing for submarines until we go underway .