More classes, more pain
14 Aug 2008 
around evening time 
Matt Winckler
Police academy is like college, but with far less focus. In the first two weeks, I have had classes on eighteen distinct topics. Some will be ongoing courses throughout academy (e.g. Criminal Law, around 40 hours or so), and others are just a single independent 2-hour block. This would make it a little tricky to study for examinations if the “exam review session” wasn’t such a joke. Our first block test is on Monday. It consists of 100 multiple-choice questions, and this afternoon the TAC Officer reviewed the test. By “reviewed the test”, I mean that he went through the test booklet and informed us of the percentage of questions that each class contributes to the test, along with topics that “it would be good to be familiar with”. I’m pretty sure it’s going to be a complete joke, but we’ll see. He did say that for all the sessions he’s been a TAC Officer (6), he’s never had an academic failure. I believe him.
Defensive Tactics continues to get serious. Yesterday we ran about 2 or 2.5 miles (still not enough to exhaust, at the pace they’re going), and then did a total of 70 pushups (plus 20 more punitive ones for someone not keeping their hands above the waist), 100 crunches, 50 Icantrememberwhattheyrecalleds–like a stomach crunch but instead raising knees up to touch elbows without moving your upper body, and 20 or so flutter kicks. This last pretty much murdered me, but at least I didn’t feel nauseous this time around. After that we moved on to interesting things and learned more “passive resistance contact techniques”. They involve twisting wrists and elbows in various and assorted painful manners, and can be used for things like convincing a drunk to stand up from a sitting position. I’m not sure how any of us will to escape this academy without serious wrist and arm injuries.
One more day and it’s weekend time again.