Week 2 - Day 1

Late Entry | SN Cleveland
BEQ#: 832 - R219

MON - 27MAR17

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Monday brought our first day at ATT (Advanced Technical Training), after a slightly late wake up and muster we got clarification that the 10 of us where in fact going to ATT and not to Fire Fighting which had been the plan when last we checked.

The "bus" to get to ATT was a whole different marching experience from the earlier one to indoc, while I wouldn't call it more organized per-say it had a different energy. The line-up ranged from people who'd been on base between 1 and 16 weeks and the levels of motivation varied widely, nonetheless there was a clear cadence to the march.

When we arrived we were funneled into classroom 306, it was a large conference room in the outboard center of a large square building with open courtyards in the center and given the ATT indoc by ET2 Palacio. Essentially every morning for the next 10 - 12 weeks we will be mustered up with ATT and bus over to our classroom. We would be mustering up at our classroom (The ET's in the room were assigned to #335) and then complete the course material within strict guidelines. Our work day (school) ends around 1500 at which point all personnel would gather and  hitch the bus back to the barracks. If anyone struggled with the material they could get a "walking chit" to head back to ATT for open learning from 1500 - 1845, then mandatory night study begins for anyone assigned to it from 1845 - 2045.

Another big part of ATT is assessing individual performance through a two fold system of academics and military baring. This is done by cross-referencing GPA and inspection scores. Those who do well can be nominated for BoB (Best of the Best) and those who are nominated are then gathered and compete for the top honor. Winning BoB can get you out of a duty day at the barracks if they accept it. I believe the Porter does.

After a lengthy explanation of the course, college credits, payment, the school house command, and various other details such as ARB's and disciplinary actions we were greeted by the LCPO of the schoolhouse CS Perras, and then had a Q&A with the OIC CMD Dancer. Both were interesting enough, and CMD Dancer had even started as an Enlisted ET.

After lunch we returned ATT and met our instructors. For 335 we got to meet STG1 Hoffman who moved us right into the material and pre-tests. The software was extremely buggy booting half the class out and having various load issues at first. The first lessons were on safety with regards to electrical work, equipment familiarization, and metric notation. By this point I struggled to stay awake, a fact that is reflected in my notes at points.

Due to the passage of time, and the blur this week has been I don't recall how the night progressed from there. I'll try to make more prompt entries once I finish this weeks batch of late logs.

Additional information: I'd forgotten how the evening went because it was legitimately a blur. I went to the Epicenter to explore the MWR offerings and went to John Wick 2 for 3 dollars at the theater. I was so tired that I slept through about 25 minutes of the movie after the first action sequence and because of that I missed the primary draw of the new plot but I still enjoyed the action sequences. From there I'm pretty sure I went back to the barracks and packed it in.

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LATE ENTRY END