We should probably cover the basic differences between Enlisted and Officer.
Think of it this way (besides flight-related jobs), enlisted DO things. Officers OBSERVE. Another way to think of this, Officers are ADMIN and managers. If you see the manager of your local Walmart toting bags of fertilizer out to the parking lot or stocking the shelves, they're doing it wrong.
Another way to look at it, my Nav on the Bremerton was a graduate of MIT and also had an EE degree. Both of us knew how neat the Inertial Nav system was. At one point I had to say "Nav, if I see you touching the buttons again I'll have to get a hammer and break your fingers"
. The kicker was that we got along as well as an officer and petty officer could. Officers and enlisted can be friends, but they CANNOT be buddies because they can never be peers. Earlier, I called this "the glass wall".
One more submarine example- Pretty much, the only equipment an officer can operate are the handles on the periscope or a pencil sharpener. They aren't even supposed to raise and lower the scope, that's the job of the Aux Of The Watch. The prince can shoot the bird but the prince cannot pick it up and take it back to the castle.
Officers make a LOT more money and their on-boat duty rotations are more favorable but Officers are constantly in the cross hairs of the CO and XO.
This is kind of surprising, but while the enlisted crew belongs to the boat, officers belong to the Squadron. There is also a highly-defined social pecking order in the Ward Room and at the Squadron. There is a really good reason why OCS is also called "Knife and Fork School". Decorum is really important. Officers are also required to pay for their meals and berthing.
Earlier, I mentioned that I had the opportunity to go to OCS but I turned it down. I need to explain that I didn't do this because I was a Bad A** or because I hated officers or the Navy. I liked maintaining and tuning my gear and I REALLY enjoyed operating it. If I had gone to OCS, those days would be over. Also (a really BIG Also) I would have to take off my dolphins and put them on the wall. My submarine days would have been, effectively, over. One of the things that was murky was whether I might have been too old to go to the officer equivalent of NUC school (I was in my late 20's at the time) and I didn't want to take that risk.
So on one hand, I turned down a big pay raise for my goofy Gilligan hat. On the other, I knew I was effective at what I was doing and I enjoyed doing it vs going to an Admin job that I was pretty sure I wouldn't enjoy that would mostly likely be on a gray painted ship. There was no, single, "right" answer and I did think about it quite a bit.