I enlisted for a 6 year stretch as part of a deal for guaranteed Electronics Technician school, which was a year long in itself. I expected to be either an ETN (communications) or an ETR (radar).
About 3/4ths of the way through school, a couple of guys in black suits (literally) pulled me out of class and asked if I wanted to be a Communications Technician, Maintenance (CTM). I had one and only one question: Do I get to finish Electronics school? "Yes, and we'll send you to a follow-on technical school on cryptographic equipment repair." "Where do I sign?"
So after ET"A" school, I went to Crypto School in Virginia for another 5 months.
As a CTM, I was part of the Naval Security Group, a very small, very specialized subset of the Navy. In my nearly 22 years of service, I spent 12 days at sea, and I had to volunteer for that. The rest of my career was spent at overseas shore stations that were in geographic proximity to...uh..."nations of interest". (Primarily Russia, tho China and North Korea figured in as well). As far as I know, the details of what we did and how we did it are still classified. I had a TS/SCI (Top Secret, Special Compartmented Information) clearance from right after "A" school until I retired.
Duty Stations in chronological order:
Great Lakes, IL (Boot camp, "A" school)
Portsmouth, VA (Crypto School)
Clark Air Base, Philippines. (We co-located and shared facilites with the Air Force Security Service a lot)
Misawa Air Base, Japan.
NSGA Winter Harbor, Maine (got married, decided to stay in)
Back to Misawa (loved that place).
Navy Technical Training Center, Pensacola Florida. Another advanced school, a bit over a year long. Got selected for instructor duty, taught the same school. Spend 5 years there.
Naval Base Charleston, South Carolina. Mobile Technical Unit, supporting the fleet. That's where I got in my 12 days of sea duty
NATO Air Base, Keflavik, Iceland. Unaccompanied tour, lonely, horrible weather. Good professionally tho, got my last promotion as a result.
Back to Winter Harbor for duty and retirement.
Overall, it was interesting and fun, especially the time spent as a dirty-fingers technician. The last few years flying a desk as a manager, not so much.
Sorry for the long post, but you asked...