Stress and progress

01 Jul 2008  around evening time  Matt Winckler

There is more progress on the career front, praise be to God: today I successfully passed an interview with the Kennewick chief of police and his command staff. Two tests remain before an official hire: the medical and the psychological exams. At this point my stress levels are much reduced, as I consider both of these tests to be essentially out of my hands. (A sane person might successfully pass himself off as crazy, but I have my doubts about whether a crazy person could pass himself off as sane. I’ll let you know after the test.)

Tentative academy start date (assuming a hire) is now late September.

The interview today was frankly somewhat disappointing. It was not challenging at all–nor, I learned from the chief himself, was it intended to be. Evidently I’d passed through enough hurdles to get to this stage, and the main point of the interview was for the chief and captains to ensure that their subordinates had not made some grievous error in judgment and let a buffoon get through their selection process. (This much I inferred.) Thus I found, to my chagrin, that the hours I spent preparing for all manner of challenging and difficult questions were rather wasted upon six (six!) measly HR-garden-variety questions (true example: “Tell me about your experiences working with people of other backgrounds”). Nothing about “You and your partner are transporting a dangerous prisoner to the county jail when you come across a serious three-vehicle accident. No one else is around, and no one is moving in the involved vehicles. What do you do?”

Even so, I failed to perform perfectly in the interview, because despite having thought an answer through beforehand, when it came to the question of “Why should we hire you?”, to my lasting regret my mind partially blanked and I neglected to include my best line: “Because I have an excellent sense of humor and look positively dashing in uniform.” They were the sort of crowd this would have gone over well with, too. Curses! Thankfully, they passed me anyway. I can surprise them with my excellent sense of humor and good looks later, as sort of a bonus.

I’m still working to get into shape so that I won’t be quite so utterly crushed when I get to police academy. I’m up to running 2.75 miles in 22 minutes, and last night I managed to knock out 50 consecutive pushups for the first time ever. (I’m attempting to follow the one hundred pushups program after seeing Richard take up the challenge.) I think the odds are that no matter how much I exercise, I’m still going to be in a world of pain at academy, but I figure that if I start in reasonable condition, I ought to end in superb condition, ready to ferret out crime and chase evildoers on foot for miles on end before wrestling them to the ground.

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