I am starting to get the hang of this place. I no longer wake up and ask myself what I am doing here. The classes are now past the orientation stage and are now getting into some police related material.
This week we learned about communication with people on the phone. We each got to play a police officer on the phone taking a complaint from a citizen. That was fun, and the start of our acting careers, apparently we will be playing bad guys, cops and bystanders a lot during our stay here.
We also did some driving this week for the first time. Our driving facilitators took us out on the skills track. There are about 5 different skill courses that we have to master. All of them involve backing up the car, which I don't really like to do. The worst thing is that I am used to driving a smaller car or a van, now we have to do the tests in great big Crown Victorias. This makes it a very different experience, but since we will be driving primarily Crown Vics it makes sense. So I have to practice this quite a bit, since when I did it with the Corporal I did quite poorly. Our Corporal then said 'Do you want to take a ride on the advanced track?' Of course us cadets in the car agreed, and we were on our way. WOW! I was in the backseat holding on for dear life when he started to go around the course. To think I will hopefully be at that level when I leave here is quite a cool thought.
This week also brought us to our firearms course. We had an orientation to the program and a tour of the facilities. The next class we were issued our sidearms, 9mm pistols. On Friday we were given the opportunity to fire our guns for the first time. I did not too bad considering I haven't fired a gun in a long long time.
Well another week down 19 more to go.
Go Troop 35