I thought I would mix things up and put weeks 11 and 12 together. These past two weeks have been filled with lots of classroom and lecture material as well as a lot of arrest control review for our upcoming test. We have learned the many ways to handcuff compliant and non-compliant people as well as a TON of takedown moves, escape moves, etc... It is crazy to see how much we have grown from day one to now. I remember the first week of arrest control thinking, "I'll never remember this move and where to grab on the hand and how to twist and where to cuff." Now it is muscle memory and has come full circle from a blur to very clear.
We are starting Week 13! We have been so busy that we have not had much time for all of this to sink in. If and when we do have time to do anything outside of the academy it is used to catch up on rest, family time, and any semblance of a social life.
Every day I wake up I am proud to be a part of this academy and class.
Speaking of waking up, let me run you through one of my days since I have gotten into quite a routine Monday through Friday.
6:01 my alarm goes off. My snooze is for 9 minutes which is weird, but I push snooze one time.
6:10 rise and almost shine.
6:30 out the door. Not quite shining yet.
7:00 arrive at academy.
7-7:20 get in uniform
7:30 meet outside for our lint rolling party
7:45 ready for inspection
8:00 enter the classroom
8-noon lecture with regular breaks. By now we can predict what snack everyone eats and when
noon-1pm lunch My lunches have even become routine. I eat the same thing every day. I think most of us are on autopilot and pack the same thing the night before because it takes less time to think about what to make or pack.
noon-1pm lunch My lunches have even become routine. I eat the same thing every day. I think most of us are on autopilot and pack the same thing the night before because it takes less time to think about what to make or pack.
1-5pm lecture Unless we have physical training days, then class is out at 4pm and we train until 5pm.
Physical training is 3 days a week. Of those three days we rotate through CrossFit, jujitsu, and running/cardio. If you are not familiar with CrossFit, try one workout and you'll be hooked. I wish we had more time to learn more jujitsu but we only have so many hours in our days. Running, I am not one of those people who volunteers to go on a run....ever.
Once I get home I get all of my stuff together for the next day. I get my lunch packed before I "shut down", lay out whichever uniform is to be worn the next day, double check my bag, then eat dinner, aka...cereal.
This has become my life for the past 12 weeks. It will be very different after graduation when we are in the real world, but the hardest part is that we won't be working with each other. For 20 weeks we will have been together.
We started in the scorching heat of the summer and have watched the seasons change. The sun piercing through us as it rose in mornings at 730 a.m. while standing in formation has turned into seeing our breath in the cold crisp and dark mornings. A piece of advice to anyone in the next academy....line up in formation facing away from the rising sun.
