This is hilarious that you put it this way, because sometimes it is EXACTLY like this. When you are on the bridge and standing watch, you are responsible for a litany of things (we had to memorize that list), but some of the key ones are safely 'navigating' the ship, preparing the ship for upcoming events, and executing your part in those events.
Focusing on just the first one, if you are sailing somewhere busy with lots of traffic, like the North Sea or the Persian Gulf (southern part), you will be on your toes the entire watch, calling the Captain a lot, and safely manoeuvring the ship to avoid close-contact situations with other vessels. If, however, your are just off the coast of Halifax (where there is almost zero traffic), its 4am, and you are doing nothing but meandering back and forth in a patrol box until morning, then it gets EXTREMELY boring. The last hour before watch turn-over is the worst; I would regularly just walk circles around the bridge singing "Show me the way to go home" to stay awake.
For the other two, it depends on what the ship is doing. Again, if you are off the coast of Halifax doing engineering trials, then you are pretty much just driving in a straight line changing engineer speeds and engine configurations for 4hrs, so not very busy. However, if you are in the Arabian sea and standing the forenoon watch (730-1130), and lets say you've got to launch the helo at 0830 with a planned recovery and re-launch at 1100, you've got planned maintenance that requires personnel to go aloft on the mast, you've got a rendezvous with an Australian destroyer at 1000 where you will be doing a boat transfer of people between the two of you, oh and there is a gunnery exercise scheduled with that destroyer that will take place on the next watch at 1200, plus there are other contacts around that you need to avoid, then you will be on your toes the whole watch.
Other things that could take up time/mental capacity on your watch include getting ready for and executing a RAS, conducting warfare exercises, boarding ops (real or exercise), streaming/recovering your towed array, man-overboard exercises, small arms shoots, engineering drills, manoevreing exercises, getting ready for an executing a navigation passage... etc
As a junior NWO, yea, it will mainly be the "watch on deck" (WOD) that works directly for you. They've reduced the mandatory number of people that make-up the WOD over the past few years, but if you stood-up a completely full bridge team, that would be a team of bosuns and Navcomms consisting of the Petty Officer of the Watch (POOW), Helmsmen, Quartermaster/Throttleman, Starboard Lookout, Bosn's Mate, Port Lookout, and two NavComms. Right now I believe they've reduced it to 1 x Bosnmate who double as a Port Lookout, a Helmsmen, a Starboard Lookout who double as a throttleman, the POOW, and zero Navcomms.
Outside of the bridge, I mean, you'll interact with NCMs all the time, but they won't work with/for you. The one exception would be when you are given the role as "baby divisional officer" and be tasked to support one of the Lt(N) directors in their divisional/administrative duties. You have no authority over those NCMs, but you may be tasked to support them in various ways.
. I never liked the Navy's culture that much but that was probably partially shaped by my decade of Infantry tomfoolery.
. Which brings me to my next favorite word: "Interpolation"
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