Is that who you think we are?
I was at work and my co-worker was watching a TV show about some people in the world of emergency response. We don't have TV at the homestead and I don't watch TV much at work so I am a little out of the modern culture loop but this show took me by surprise.
The characters in the show where not "tired" enough.
Not one of them had the look of a professional rescuer, none had the look of someone who had slogged threw "the shit" hour after hour, day after day. They where all so "young" none had seen horrors. I never realized how much the field changes you, never really thought about the look my partners have in their eyes until I saw people trying to look like "us" and seeing that they where missing some intangible "something". I am not sure if I should be amused or distressed by this revelation. Generally we give people about two years to get in the groove at work, and not until now did I realize that the experience you get in that first two years also comes with a healthy dose of soul tainting horror.
Rather than be amused at the wide-eyed inexperience of my trainees maybe I need to be a little more sensitive to the psychological and spiritual trauma that we are subjecting them to.
To quote the "saying of the week" at my station: Someday we probably should get therapy for all the issues we cover with humor.
The characters in the show where not "tired" enough.
Not one of them had the look of a professional rescuer, none had the look of someone who had slogged threw "the shit" hour after hour, day after day. They where all so "young" none had seen horrors. I never realized how much the field changes you, never really thought about the look my partners have in their eyes until I saw people trying to look like "us" and seeing that they where missing some intangible "something". I am not sure if I should be amused or distressed by this revelation. Generally we give people about two years to get in the groove at work, and not until now did I realize that the experience you get in that first two years also comes with a healthy dose of soul tainting horror.
Rather than be amused at the wide-eyed inexperience of my trainees maybe I need to be a little more sensitive to the psychological and spiritual trauma that we are subjecting them to.
To quote the "saying of the week" at my station: Someday we probably should get therapy for all the issues we cover with humor.