To The Sleep Cycle!

Oy.... This week has my sleep cycles all messed up. Here it is only 8:00pm and I'm already yawning my head off. It's making me old before my time. Or possibly right after. I forget.

Ran into the Training Gnome the other morning while I was picking up my new shirts. (New shirts that fit! Yayyy!) Shook my finger at him and said "Any more of this surprise training and you and me are going to have some issues!"

He just laughed. Imagine that.

So after four years of trying, I'm finally going to be a Field Training Officer. What that really means is that they consider me (after I've been trained, of course) someone who can show the new hire officers what to do while working in a prison.

Not like I haven't been doing that already, mind you. It just means that I'll have a certificate and a little extra dingus to hang on my shirt pocket that lends me an air of legitimacy.

Whoops. Just a hint of cynicism poking out there. Sarcasm. That thing.... you know.

It's not that I don't believe in the program. I do. I think it has great potential and can be a good tool for helping new officers learn how to do their jobs and survive the probation period with all of their limbs and just enough brain cells intact.

And it can also be a helpful tool in weeding out some of those who don't need to be here in the first place. A few of those get through and once they get past probation it's the Devils Own Mother to get rid of them again before someone gets hurt. That takes an act of Congress sometimes.

It's a good program, like I said, if it's utilized properly. Unfortunately it isn't always. The OJT's get shunted off somewhere that we need bodies or used as extras to do some large search to look good on paper most of the time and not left with an FTO long enough to actually learn anything. The Captains and the Lieutenants tend to look at them as free staff and use them where they can to cover holes in the shift rather than trying to get them trained and that's a real shame.

And I'm enjoying the class so far. It's been spirited and lively and made us think outside of the box some. I'm just hoping that I am alert enough to be absorbing some of this information.

I want to be a good FTO like I want to be a good Sergeant like I wanted to be a good COI.

Did that last sentence make any sense? I keep looking at it like someone just wrote that in Martian or something.

Holy snap I'm tired.

And sometime in the next week or so they are probably going to move me to another shift.

If I drop dead of a heart attack let this be my witness. They did it to me. The swine!

Let me check the calendar for the first time in forever and then I'm off to bed.

Thursday is going to be National Date-Nut Bread Day, Ann & Samantha Day (?), National Haiku Poetry Day, Regifting Day and the Yule. Whatever a Yule is.

I can't even make that into a sentence. Dang!