halfway there

I'm elated to say that I am now over halfway finished with flight attendant training. Thank God! Graduation couldn't get here soon enough!

We just completed week 4. It consisted of a midterm, 5 aircraft tests, and midterm emergency management validations. Overall, it was a busy week. Our instructors have been so excited to teach the aircraft specific section of our training since the beginning, so we were all looking forward to it. But boy, were we wrong. This is what pretty much each day this week looked like (with the exception of our midterm day). The first thing we did after reporting to the training center was take a test on the aircraft we studied the previous day. Immediately following the test, we did online training on the aircraft we would be studying that day, then we go into lecture. We covered how many exits are on the aircraft, how to operate those exits, where the jumpseats are, what the minimum crew is, emergency equipment locations, etc. Every.little.detail. And let me tell you, there are a lot of minor differences. Lunch is thrown in at some point and then we went down to our 'mock-ups' in which we practiced normal and emergency operation of that aircraft's exits (windows, doors, tailcones, etc.). Each person has to pass off on the ability to operate the exits because at the end of training, we have our door proficiency day. One of the most nerve-racking days of training. We will have to go in and test off on every exit of every aircraft before graduating. You fail, you go home. I heard of a girl last year who had to retest on her doors the morning of graduation. She failed and was sent home from training. Oh, and her family had flown in from Brazil to see her graduate. No bueno. That being said, our door proficiency is critical to passing. After we all practiced exit operation, we had a review and headed home. That happened every.single.day. All in all, not my favorite week. I am looking forward to this upcoming week though! Week 5 is international week (can someone say Paris?!) so there will be lots of training on customer service, cultural sensitivity, food/beverage service standards, among other non-aircraft specific related subjects. Unfortunately, we still have 4 aircrafts left to study (with multiple variations of each aircraft), but at least we're finished with 5 of them!

19 days left friends. Just 19 days. Praise.the.Lord.