Training Begins.....

On March 6th, 2007 I woke bright and early at 4 AM to catch the first flight of the day from Atlanta (ATL) to Fort Lauderdale (FLL), Waking early was not my forte, but thankfully, my mother had purchased me this great little alarm clock called the "screaming meanie". The name of the clock should spell it out for you, but needless to say, I did not oversleep one single time during my training. Anyway, I spent the whole flight, which was less than 2 hours, going over and over the study items that were sent to me and realizing I had truly reached the point of no return. I new enough to just sit, study, think, and be quiet. I was anxious and a little worried, but mainly excited! I would soon be traveling around the country, Central and South America, and the Caribbean. I think I looked at my brand new passport 1000 times on that flight between brief study sessions.

When we landed in Fort Lauderdale I headed straight to baggage claim to get my luggage. There were two other ladies, Valentine & Mindy from other flights waiting as well! I would soon learn that they were in my class and we would be sharing a shuttle to the hotel! We were the first 3 to arrive. They were both very kind and we had great conversation on the way to the hotel. When we got to the hotel we promptly checked in and headed to put our things away. Afterwards, my two new friends and I found a great little Tapas restaurant where we ate before heading back to the hotel for the night.

 I knew that I was to have a roommate, but this Tom guy had not checked in yet. At the time, I was a smoker, so I would go outside to smoke and was NEVER without my study materials. On one of my evening smoke breaks, I was on the phone with my sister, this very attractive lady walks up to me and informed me that she was in my class and asked if I would like to ride to the store with her. I replied with a nod and a thank you but informed her I was OK. Then she repeated asking me to please ride with her. Little did I know that she would turn out to be my best friend in just a few short days! I realized very soon why she wanted me to ride with her, another class mate, whom would turn out to be my roommate Tom, had shown up missing some required items for class and asked her to take him to get a flashlight. Obviously, she did not feel safe driving one strange man to the store alone, I can't blame her for that!

On the way to the store my new BF and I discussed that we were going in getting the items we needed as quickly as possible and getting out. No time to waste there was studying to be done. However, our 3rd companion did not grasp the concept and decided to go on an hour long shopping spreed. He bought so much crap you would think he was stocking for a military stand-off, My BF was stressing miserably and I was just dumbfounded! I kept asking him to just go check out so we could get to the hotel and study before bed. He was "Mr. Cool", he had this under control. So FINALLY with his cart full he headed to check out and another 30 minutes later, we are on our way back to the hotel to study and get to bed so we would be prepared for our first day of class. Needless to say, Tom only made it through about a week of raining before failing out.

Bright and early the next morning, as threatened, this "screaming meanie" came alive and I SHOT out of bed. My heart was racing a mile a minute. I thought the building was on fire or something. I realized it was my precious alarm clock which I promptly turned off and now I was WIDE AWAKE, as was my roommate and anyone else within a 5 room radius! Time to get showered, dressed in my pressed business attire, grab all of the items we were required to bring to class the first day, and head to breakfast before heading to class. I soon realized that the majority of the folks there were also in my class. The van showed up right on time and we were off to the first day of class.

As we walked into our training for the first day, our instructors were there to greet us with great big smiles, looking very dapper in their flight attendant uniforms. We were assigned seating indicated by paper tents on the tables with our names on them. These would be changed daily so that we sat next to different people every day. However, they caught on real quick that my new best friend and I were close, so they made it a point to never seat us together. Three persons per able, and the tables were three wide. There was about 30 of us in the class on that first day. We had previously been instructed to bring our "required items" on day one for compliance check. This list included; black luggage, black shoes (two pair for the ladies , one for serving and one for walking to and from the aircraft), a watch with a second hand, our passports, a flash light with a spare battery, a workbook that we had already bee given to complete prior to training,  business casual attire, and a good attitude. We were all in compliance ..... that day anyway.

We each got up one by one, told who we were, where we were from, what base we were, and why we wanted to fly. Of course, the number one reason was because we wanted to travel. One of the men in the class had a mother that already flies for this airline, one of the girls had an aunt that flies for this airline, and one of the ladies had retired from flying... she started with Pan Am. Boy would I love to hear all of her stories!

Once all of the formalities were out of the way, we were handed our first of many tests. The first one was on airport codes, aviation lingo codes, and military time. Thank goodness my baby sister, the teacher, drilled me with pop quizzes daily for months in preparation for this! Now it comes pretty easily, but in the beginning is may as well have been in Zulu! We had to know that ATL was the airport code for Atlanta, that POB was a portable oxygen bottle, and that 0:400 was too damned early for ANYONE to wake up but we would still have to get up at that hour from time to time!

Then they gave us this huge red book. This was our flight attendant manual, and by the end of training we would all know this thing frontwards, backwards, and up the middle. I remember thinking at the end of the first week how amazed I was by the amount of knowledge the two instructors could cram in our heads in a week, and it stuck. At first glance I thought there was no way in hell I would retain all of that information in 3 1/2 short weeks, but we all did it.

As the days and weeks went on, we had study sessions in the hallways of the hotel where we were staying. We would take over the lobby for study groups. There were even nights when you would find some of us in the gym with the demo equipment practicing our safety demonstration. Then there were nights when we did our studies with the assistance of social lubrication. We would even sit outside screaming our evacuation commands, which scared a lot of the other guests I am sure.  We began to get closer and closer to our classmates and by the end, not only did I have the best friend ever, I had a whole group of GREAT friends, it was like we were all part of one big happy family. Well not all of us were happy with the part where we had to flip head first into that freezing pool then rescue each other into the life raft, but I digress. It was truly a fast paced, knowledge filled, fun, exciting, stressful, and rewarding experience to go through in order to ear nour wings.

One day we were told that we would be leaving class a 1pm and we were all excited until we found out that we had to be at the airport at 11PM and would be there until 4 AM. However, we would have no class the next day so we could study for the following day's tests. Well, the night at the airport was so that we could all get on a plane and see, touch, and get familiar with everything we had been learning in class. So, there is a group of us in the flight deck with a mechanic who is showing us where the emergency equipment is located. He points out where the escape ropes are. So he says "The pilots will open the window, take the plastic cover off the compartment containing the rope, and throw the rope out the window." To which, and I am NOT MAKING THIS UP, Valentine replies with a shocked look on her face, "Well, if they throw it out the window, how will they get out?" Trying to hold in my laugh and not choke, I informed her that we had already learn one end of the rope is permanently attached to the ceiling of the flight deck. She just could not understand, but we loved her dearly. We were all very sad when she got sick a few days later and had to leave training.

The day we took our finals was long a grueling, we had to sit through hours of  presentations from different departments, presentations from the union, filling out our information forms to select our insurance, travel companions, and so on. After all of that, then we could finally take our final exams and fortunately we all passed. Now, we could graduate and get the wings we had so duly earned.

There were some that were there on day one who would not graduate with us, some we missed, some we never knew, and some we did not miss so much, but as graduation day grew closer we were all excited to get our wings in front of friends and family! We were allowed to invite friends and family down to join us on that very special day. My parents came as did my friends Al and Lynda (the ones responsible for me getting into flight attending).  The instructors put together a great video presentation with pictures that had been taken from the first day of class to the last. They caught us in every awkward scenario they could and they put it all on film to the tune of great music. Needless to say we laughed, we cried, and we hugged. It was a great day!  We were each told that we could elect to take a few days off to recover or we could volunteer to be on call right away.I of course, was eager to get started so I rushed off to the room that I had rented in Fort Lauderdale to unpack and get things ready for my first trip. Of course not without the help of my best friend, and my parents.

After we got everything unloaded, my bestie headed off to Fort Myers to return her vehicle. Mom, dad, and I walked over the the nearby K-Mart to do a little shopping, picked up to go food for dinner and headed back to my room. We were so exhausted that all three of us fell asleep on top of the covers of my king sized bed. Not one of us woke up until my phone rang. I answered it and heard "Hello this is *** from scheduling and we have a trip for you."