Vacay Time!

The last week before my Christmas break had been insanely stressful. I could punch every person who said our last course was supposed to be easy. It was not; at least not for me.  There wasn’t a lot of theory, but the practical was a struggle for me. But I managed to understand it in the end.

I believe it was Tuesday when we began to do fault finding. That was a bad day for me. It wasn’t sinking in for me. I got so flustered and frustrated to the point where I just wanted to go hide and cry. I  didn’t want to fail. While most of my coursemates completed 10 faults or more completed by the end of the day, I had a measly 5. So that night I studied the schematics and theory some more.

The next day I was doing a bit better, and with some help from my instructor everything began to make more sense. By the end of the day I had done 16 faults and was definitely feeling a lot better. I spent pretty much the whole night studying my tush off. I had both my written and practical exams the next morning.

The written exam I didn’t feel good about. There were a lot of questions where I felt a bit unsure about. But I did a lot better than I had expected. Even scoring higher than some other people who normally do well! That was a major confidence booster. I was feeling a whole lot better about doing the practical.

The practical went a lot smoother. It only took me 40 minutes to complete my 5 faults, which is impressive considering on our first day of fault finding it took me probably close to 2 hours to do 5 faults! I passed with flying colours!

I’m almost half way though my Christmas break, which is sad. I wish I had more time at home. It hasn’t really felt like Christmas this year. I blame mother nature being drunk. Let’s see earlier this week it was actually warmer here than it was in some parts of California. For those of you unfamiliar where I live, normally at this time of year we have snow and are sitting below zero.

Christmas eve was spent at my parents with my husband. Instead of doing the traditional turkey or ham we grilled steaks! It was delicious! Felt a little strange at first but it was grilling weather! Today we’re doing the big Polish Christmas dinner with my husbands family. There will be lots of yummy foods! Tomorrow we’re driving up to Trenton to visit my Brother and his family, doing Christmas #3 with them. Then it’s back home for a few more days.

Since coming home I’ve finally sink my teeth into Fallout4. It’s better than I had expected. I’m not big on FPS games, mainly because they stress me out a lot. But playing with my hubby right next to me has eased my stress. Mainly because I can throw the controller at him if I’m starting to feel really stressed, lol! And he also offers a lot of moral support by coaching me through what I need to be doing.

This may be my last entry for year, so Marry Christmas and Happy New Year!

I’ll Be Home For Christmas

It’s that wonderful time of year once again! I can’t wait to get back home for a couple of weeks and spend some much needed quality time with my hubby and family. I wish I could say I have most of my Christmas shopping done, but that would be a flat out lie. I have a couple things, but not much. It’s hard because I’m still relatively far away from shopping areas and with being on course I have other priorities like studying and passing my classes.

I booked my train home last week. Thank you Via Rail for your Black Friday deals! All fares were reduced plus I also got an additional discount. I went with Business Class because I can and I wanted to spoil myself a little. Honestly, if you can, choose Business class! It’s worth every cent! More leg room, meals and drinks all included. Priority boarding, access to the business class lounges where there’s more free drinks/food. It’s a pleasant experience overall.

I had a rather difficult exam yesterday morning. I felt so confident going in and then I opened the exam book and suddenly I felt like Jon Snow.

The problem stems from how wordy the questions are. There were a lot of trick questions. Most exams are like that and it’s incredibly frustrating. I know the subject matter, it’s just gah! The way they word the questions could drive you up the wall! My other issue with the exam is that there were questions on there about stuff we hardly talked about in class. So that gets a little annoying.

We had our practical exam this morning and again I felt pretty good about it before hand. I did really well on the practise exam the day before but my goodness! The first 2 faults were BRUTAL. I got the second one wrong, which I had a feeling would happen. Given the symptoms and comparing the readings to my nominals, it was hard to determine where the fault actually was. From the sounds of it a lot of my course-mates struggled with the first 2 faults. The last 3 were a breeze. At least for me anyways. But still, afterwards I was stressing so much!

It’s especially stressful having to sit in a room for over an hour just waiting to find out if you passed or failed. Then everyone starts to discuss the exam and you start to second guess your answers. It’s just a downwards spiral! I was freaking out in my head. What if I failed and had to do a retest? What if I failed the retest? How far back would they recourse me? Everyone is different, some people get lucky and only go back a course or two. Others aren’t that lucky. There’s a girl who just failed out of amplifiers (approx 3-4 months into POET) and is being sent all the way back to the very beginning.

Supposedly they send you back to where they feel you began to struggle. But each case is different and they look at a number of things other than your marks, like your attitude, whether you’re staying for extra help when it’s offered, etc… But seeing as this would be my first fail, would I be able to get on the course right after mine? Or would they send me further back? I’ve been here for nearly 6 months, I con’t think I could handle doing all the all over again.

Thankfully I passed. I did get the second fault wrong. I wanted to argue it because based on my symptoms and reading, they wouldn’t have lead me to where the actual fault was. But I didn’t want to fight it. I didn’t want to argue. I took my passing grade as it was. I was just so relieved. No more stressing! At least until my next set of exams next week.

 

Wrap Up

Well that just about wraps up my BMQ journal entries that I wrote. I’ll fill in some of what happened after my last entry.

We had our drill test the following day. Only a handful of people failed. And because not everyone passed none of us got our cap badges. We did eventually get them the following day after the re-test when everyone passed. The rest of the day was “free-time” for us, for the most part.

We were assigned “Duty Platoon” our last week, which meant we had to clean the common areas on base. But the weather was starting to get bad. So the decision was made to let anyone who was driving home leave at 14:30. We lost about 1/3 of our platoon, maybe more. Certain areas we were told we didn’t have to clean because they were a safety hazard. And because so many of our platoon had left Duty Staff told us all we had to clean was the Green Break Room.

Once we were finished cleaning that, we were “free” to do as we pleased. Kinda. Some people went to the Mess, but came back disappointed when they discovered they weren’t serving alcohol. I just hung out on our floor playing card games. We eventually played Cards Against Humanity. BEST. GAME. EVER. We had some good laughs.

Since being home I’ve had to do a lot of Christmas shopping and readjusting to civilian life. You think it wouldn’t be hard, but it is. Especially walking. When you get used to marching everywhere, walking normally is hard. It’s been hard not calling anyone who serves me (cashiers, waiters etc..) Staff. Oh and cutting back on swearing.

There have been some good habits I’ve developed, like always being aware of timings. When someone says “lets meet at such-and-such a time” I always make sure I’m at least 5mins early. I almost fear being late. I don’t want to get yelled at!

I leave to go back tomorrow. Of course we’re getting hit with a snow storm. Just figures. We had a very mild Christmas with no snow and the day I leave we get it. I’m just hoping there’s no major delays.

Packing has been a bitch. Trying to figure out what to bring is hard. Well clothing wise any ways. After grad, chances are I’m going to my next posting and not home. So I’ll need a better variety of civilian clothes. And definitely more winter clothes. What I had before weren’t the warmest things I could have brought.