A childhood belief about technology

I joined the navy at 18 to be on a submarine. The recruiter talked me into choosing nuclear power plant operator for my job-path and I thought it sounded pretty cool even though I knew zero about nuclear power. The next day in high-school I'm telling a friend about joining and running the sub with nuclear power and stuff and he says to me "oh, so they don't use propellers anymore?", and I'm like "no, they use nuclear power now." I guess I was picturing it to be some sort of jet propulsion type thing with 'nuclear power' shooting out the back of the boat to push it through the water. After boot-camp I started the classroom training and I was a little dissapointed by the low-tech reality of nuclear power. For those who don't know all it does is boil water to create steam for turbines.
On another note about the navy, I didn't realize until boot-camp that wood isn't used to build ships. I knew the outside was steel but I figured the inside must be at least partially wood to reduce the weight. What did I know, I was from Nebraska and had never even seen the ocean!