Trainee

I have a trainee. Normally, I would be jazzed, but things are a little different this time. I normally train on fire dispatching and on phonecalls, and usually get the trainee at month 3 or so after they have learned how to use CAD and have figured Vesta out. I love teaching and love to see them figure things out and succeed. We all have 'areas of expertise' and mine happens to be in the fire service.

For some reason, management decided to give me a brand new hire. I'm her first trainer, and I have no idea what she needs to learn first. There is so much information that needs to be covered and so much memorization that she needs to work on. It has been the most frustrating week ever! She is only 22, and thinks she knows everything- which really ticks me off. The nerve of someone to walk in and think they can do what we do after watching for 1 day! I wanted to smack her. I was a nervous wreck my first 4 months thinking I wouldn't be able to do it. I stayed up nights memorizing codes and commands, had notecards everywhere, and set up a montage of post-its at my workstation each day. But nooooo, she doesn't need to take notes, she 'just remembers' things. Thats hoooey!

I'm feeling a bit intimidated because, for the first time, I dont have a plan of attack! Normally I know what I want to teach each day and know what goals to set for each week etc. I'm kind of stumbling thru this and it ticks me off. (I have control issues if any of you couldn't tell already) This is only her first week. I'm supposed to give her weekly eval tomorrow so I think I'll come up with some tests to see how many codes shes actually memorized. Grrr. Help, anyone?