"We're not gonna make it folks..."

So the title of today's blog is one of my Sgt's favorite things to say when we screw up big time and i just wanted to share it with my adoring fans.  It generally refers to the fact that we keep messing up the minor things, so we'll never make it to the big stuff.

Things started to look up for the recruits of the 100th academy session this week.  We started wearing our uniforms on Wednesday, which surprisingly went amazingly well!  The first day of wearing uniforms at the academy has supposedly been hellish for recruits of academies past and we made it through our first informal inspection rather unscathed.  We had one squad where almost all of them forgot to button the back of their tie to their shirt, and a couple of small i.p's (Irish pennants, or little stray threads on a uniform) that instructors will pull on until one of two things happens; the thread comes out, or whatever it was holding together falls off or comes apart as we learned this morning when another recruits sleeve cuff was easily removed...  This was more than likely because his sleeve lacks the discipline it needs to stay together.

We're really starting to come together as a team, and its starting to be apparent to our instructors.  We're PTing more successfully and with exuberant amounts of motivation, we're helping each other learn how to wear the uniforms properly (mainly on the shoulders of us prior military folks), we're having study sessions at peoples houses, and the list goes on...  Thankfully we received our police recruit badges to wear on our uniforms and covers (hats for all the civilians out there), and what a feeling it was to receive my first police badge, even if its just a recruit one.

On the other hand, we're by no means perfect.  To be honest, we're only at about the week two level of teamwork achieved at a military boot camp, but going home everyday hinders that ability to meld together successfully in a relatively short period of time.  Other sad points of the week...  we had 11 failures on our search/seizure/arrest exam (i squeaked by with a 79%), and we have to people on light duty for injuries.

I'll leave you all with my favorite quote from our instructors this week "the difference between involved and committed is like ham and eggs.  The chicken is involved, but the pig is committed."

Till next time, stay motivated and keep your nose to whatever grindstone it needs to be attached to.