TL;DR - Human memory sucks without ritual

Next day analysis of Basic Academy drills:

If I were my proctor yesterday, I would have given myself a big fat failure…no question about it. But that is a great thing. Drills are where we go to fail, make mistakes, feel safe pressure, experiment with thought processes and keep our cool when cool heads are in short supply.

And thus the lessons I learned yesterday:

I know I operate best with 2 highly developed skills: object memory permanence and relentless repetition: I’m taking borderline self abusive repetition. To kill and drill information is almost a relaxing hobby.

When it comes to object memory permanence, I am a machine. I can recall an object’s location or attributes about that object with great accuracy. But the attributes I memorize must come from that repetitive recitation of the data, otherwise it slips away fast.

Here is an example of how my object permanence broke down without repetition. The image on the left is my triage cheat sheet card that shows how to triage found survivors in a disaster. Since my basic academy last February, I haven’t looked at this card in some time and, in my head, rearranged the triangle in my head to look like the image on the right. No memory rituals, no quizzing from my family, no 5 mile walks and repetition of the information…just cold and bold volunteering for a job I wasn’t great at and let the chips fall where they may…

The image in my mind on the right is very incorrect

As a result, when I found a survivor in a closet, she was in a position where it looked like she wasn’t breathing because she was squished between two objects. If you look at the cheat sheet under the black tag, it says “No Respirations”. In my memory, I forget the next part “AFTER HEAD TILT”.

Yeah, totally shanked that one…so I black tagged our medical chief…

As a red shirt (provisionally deployable) our newest free range CERTs were shocked I failed to do a head tilt and thought I should have known better. They’re not wrong, but this is what is so great about the academy: it is a place to make these mistakes. I plan on failing a whole bunch more in the academy and bluesky drills and will be very open and transparent about what I learned.

And BTW…I’m only like…30 hours ahead of our new CERTie’s…I barely know any of this material right now…but ask me again in 10 years…