Simulator #6 -- The 4-Hour Ass Whooping

5:31 AM - Friday, Oct. 21, 2005
Simulator #6 -- The 4-Hour Ass Whooping

Now that 24 hours have passed and I’ve calmed down (I’m actually writing this log on the night of the 21st), I have a bit more objectivity. A bit. Suffice it to say, Sim Session #6 whooped our assess. Almost as badly as Sim #3. Last night I had to remind myself, kind of like a silent mantra, “breathe deeply and don’t cry, breathe deeply and don’t cry – there is no crying in flying, there is no crying in flying”. It sucked that bad.

I’m not really sure why it sucked so badly, actually. It was like we’d regressed and things we once knew we didn’t last night. I was exhausted to start, as I’d gone home for my day off and got my schedule messed up. When I got back to the hotel around 2pm I took a nap for about 4 hours to try to assuage the damage from my schedule deviation, but it didn’t really help. And while I was home I felt like I was coming down with something. Sore throat, swollen glands, headache and upset tummy. That lasted for a few days, and culminated last night. I was supposed to fly last, but Steve agreed that I looked like crap and let me fly first. It didn’t help. I still sucked on nearly every maneuver, even things I’d consistently done correctly before this session. That was so frustrating – to not only have a new instructor (we were very happy with Keith, thank you very much) but to then fly like a moron. Great. At the end of the session I got all low marks again, and John, our new instructor, suggested that many of Keith’s previous positive marks and comments in my file were erroneous. Yeah, that helps low self-esteem and high self-doubt….

It’s hard to put that stuff behind me. I’ve never been a big fan of criticism, and it’s hard to just breathe the comments in, let them swirl around in my mind like a robust wine, and then allow them sink in without making them mean anything. Though I am getting less and less quick to berate my mistakes, and I’m getting more and more able to shrug off some of my mistakes. But to have an entire sim session feel like a freaking waste of time really hacked me.

Thoughts of dying in the night and winning the lottery ran through my feeble mind until I finally fell asleep. Either would be preferable to this humiliating, degrading, brow-beating crap. The days are starting to suck, and we’re all feeling it. I ran into another crew from our class and they were, thankfully, feeling the same way. None of us feel like we deserve our pilot’s certificates, and none of us want to be here anymore. This sure is a lot of bullshit to put up with for crappy hours, a less than desirable schedule, and pay only slightly above that which would allow us to qualify for food stamps. It stopped being fun a few weeks ago, and now it feels just dreadful. The only thing that keeps us hanging in there is the fact that in just a few more days we’ll be done with training.

Steve and I have our checkride scheduled for the middle of the night on the 25th. But John, our new instructor, decided that we weren’t were Keith had said we were in our progress, suggesting that we might need an extra night in the sim. Which is like a big stigma around here, “Oh, you needed an extra sim? Hmm. Bummer.” It sucks to be branded “slow learners” as we’ve been feeling pretty darn retarded for weeks now. But it does beat busting a checkride. THAT would suck.

So, tonight was a little better, though we both made a lot of errors. It’s not flowing yet. It still feels like we’re barely managing to stay up with the plane for most of our approaches and maneuvers. We do something, and if by some miracle it happens to be within standards, that’s it – we move on to something else. And if it’s not within standards the first time, we do it once or twice more and hope that it is. The typical method of human learning is all but thrown out the windows here. There is no time to practice something until we feel comfortable. We’re expected to “chair fly” in our minds in front of the cockpit poster, but it’s not the same. Not even close.

After a little discussion tonight Steve and I have decided we’d rather live with the Stigma of Having An Extra Sim Session than go forward into our ride feeling this shaky. Neither of us would put ourselves up for a checkride in any other rating in our careers, and this one matters the most. We sure as hell wouldn’t send any students up for their rides if they felt this miserable about the way things were progressing!

The other good news about having another session is that we might not have to have Mr. Fezer, The Meanest and Toughest Examiner of Them All. We learned that we have the hard-ass dude for the checkride if we fly it as scheduled. So we’re all in agreement that if we can toss in another night in the box, get a little more comfortable with the way things need to be, and then tempt the scheduling gods to give us a different examiner, we’d be better off.

Meanwhile, I’m getting to the point that I just don’t care….