There is a moment in every military career where you realize nobody is coming to hand you the thing you want. You either go take it yourself or you watch someone else get it.
Mine came in Scotland.
Thurso: The Training Nobody Asked Me To Do
When I was stationed at Naval Communications Station United Kingdom – Thurso, Scotland – my primary role was crypto tech. But the station needed VERDIN/ISABPS support (the premier positions), and bodies were thin. So they started training me on the job. It wasn’t formal. It wasn’t guaranteed to lead anywhere. But the system was there, the need was real, and I was willing.
Then two brand-new VERDIN techs arrived — fresh out of school, orders in hand, and with all the attention that comes with being the shiny new asset the command has been waiting for. I was already there. I already knew most of tech control. I had been putting in the time. And somehow, overnight, I became the background.
I’ll be honest: it bothered me. Not because I begrudged those guys – they were good people, and they had done exactly what the Navy asked them to do. But they needed to do their time. Experience isn’t a credential you hand out on arrival.
So I decided I wasn’t going to stand for it.
Almost every morning, I came in early. I pulled the VERDIN technical manuals out of the safe – because that’s where they lived – and I studied. Every piece of equipment. Every module. How the subsystems interfaced. How the system behaved end to end under different conditions. I did the same thing on duty nights when time permitted. There was no instructor. There was no curriculum. There was just me, the manuals, and a decision.
It didn’t take long. I retook my position above both of them, became the lead VERDIN tech at the station, and ended up in the supervisor role in the spaces. I was regarded – formally and informally – as the VERDIN tech at Thurso. Not one of them. The one.
That is what self-directed learning looks like before anyone called it that.
Norfolk: The Secret I Didn’t Get to Keep
My orders eventually took me to VERDIN/ISABPS school in Norfolk, Virginia – the formal pipeline that produces rated VERDIN technicians for the fleet. From there, I was slated for permanent assignment to Naval Computer and Communications Station Cutler, Maine – the most powerful, most operationally respected VERDIN site of the eight that existed globally.
I had a plan for Norfolk. I was going to walk in, say nothing about my background, and let the course play out. No one needed to know I had already taught myself the system. I was going to attend as a student, observe how the Navy taught it formally, and reinforce everything I’d absorbed from those early mornings with the manuals. It felt like the right way to handle it.
I walked into the first day of class. The lead instructor pulled me aside after the first break, and blew my cover.
A former Thurso colleague, who knew the lead instructor, had already called ahead. He had told the instructor I was coming, that I had trained myself on the system, and that I was good. My cover was gone before I sat down.
What followed was one of the better experiences of my technical career. I went through the entire course – four to five months – and missed only one test question (written incorrectly per my opinion). I aced every practical. The instructors refered me to real life experiences as I came from an operational site – something none of them had. We became colleagues. And when the course material was incorrected or dated – which happened more than once – I flagged it, they listened, and we worked through it together.
I wasn’t the student who showed up already knowing the material and coasted. I was the student who showed up already knowing the material and used that advantage to go deeper. There is a difference.
The Through-Line
What connects Thurso and Cutler – and honestly, every chapter of what came after — is this: I have never waited for someone to give me a credential before I started doing the work.
In Thurso, I learned the system before I had orders to learn it. In Norfolk, I validated what I had built on my own. At Cutler, I walked in with two advantages: the formal training and the experience that formal training can’t replicate.
The manuals in the safe at Thurso were the beginning of something I didn’t have a name for yet. I was building a methodology – show up early, go to the primary sources, understand the system at depth, and don’t wait for someone to tell you it’s your turn.
That methodology has followed me into every certification I’ve earned since, every audit engagement I’ve led, and every CMMC assessment I’ve prepared for. The credential comes after the competence. The competence comes from the work.
Doug Was Built Not Born. And the foundation was poured in Scotland, one technical manual at a time.