It's been a while! I've been meaning to write up a brief summary of my adventures during recruit school, but the further away it gets, the more of a chore it seems to sit down and nut out what actually happened over those magical 10.4 weeks. So I'll put off doing the boot camp chapter until another day.
So, what's been happening since July? I managed to survive basic training, and after a few days' break after graduation, I flew back to Melbourne and hauled a minimal amount of gear to the good ship HMAS Cerberus. The Australian Defence Force School of Catering is located on a Navy base, which isn't actually a ship, although it is still regarded as such. Cerberus is also home to the Navy recruit school, and is also a tri-service training base for a handful of musterings, including Physical Training Instructors, Communications, Medics, and Dental Assistants.
Even though I do come across other RAAFies, it's very much a pusser's world here. The lingo doesn't make much sense to me, seeing as it's slang for 'purser', the person in charge of money/pay on a ship... and 'pusser' is used to refer to all Navy people here. There's talk of cabins, decks and rescrubs, and our duties are divided into watches. The trainee cooks get to work in the galley (it's not a mess any more, that's crazy landlubber talk) one in three weekends. Apparently we get it pretty easy, seeing as we don't have any other duties like shifts at the gangway in the middle of the night. I'm just glad that the duties we have are actually relevant to the work we're learning to do.
The cooks' training itself is quite intense, but so far I've found it manageable. Our course material is supposedly meant to take about 18 months to comfortably cover in the civvie world, but what we do is basically a crash course version of it over 21 weeks. I'm actually glad we're not doing the slow version, even though I can imagine some people struggling to read up on the theory notes and references in their own time, and I'm old enough to almost resent having my hand held with regards to such things. One of the great things about cooking in general is that I can pretty much learn by seeing something done, and then trying it for myself. It's taken me a good few years to realise that although I've winged it for most of my life academically by showing minimal interest and having a good memory, I can really consolidate things if there's some kind of practical element.
Much like my experiences during boot, we're at the tail end of week five and I've found that the difficulty I have with being part of this game isn't really to do with the course work. It's a people thing. I know how they say that if you think the problem is with everyone else, it's more likely to do with you, but I believe I've seen enough of the military training environment to draw some pretty solid conclusions. There's just far too many people that somehow manage to get through the interviews, the enlistment, and even recruit training, that still hang on to attitudes that ultimately bring themselves and the rest of the team down. Rumour has it that our course is one of the most troublesome that has come through in three or so years, in terms of behaviour and group dynamics.
We've been given a few weeks to get through the 'storming' stage, you know how it goes in any pack, where there's a battle for the position of top dog. No one really knows who's on top as yet, but it just seems to be getting cattier and cattier. Or doggier, perhaps? Our chefs and course manager have been waiting for the 'norming' to happen, but I don't think it's going to happen of its own accord. I thought at the beginning that the loudness, the immaturity, the random acts of carelessness and/or selfishness would die down once we all got to know and respect each other a bit more, but to no avail. Not that I went to school with teenage boys, but I am suddenly incredibly grateful that I was sent to a single sex secondary school, if this is any indication of how ridiculous it is to try and learn anything with a bunch of testosterone-fuelled beings.
The theory is that if there are more females in the class, the maturity level will naturally rise to match the average. Unfortunately, I'm the only female in our course, and I must admit that being surrounded by boys for most of my week only turns me into one of them. In fact, I'm almost positive that some of the things I've got away with saying and doing in class have been solely because I'm female. I had the temporary honour of earning enough manliness equivalent to one testicle, but then had to drop in my pants for dry-cleaning, so I lost my manhood when I turned up to morning parade wearing my skirt. D'oh! But in all honesty, I actually feel more comfortable being a woman amongst men, than I ever did in recruit school living amongst a hive of females.
If anything, the thing that most sets me apart in this place is being a RAAFie on a Navy base. Although I'm relatively comfortable with the goings on of my own service, being treated like a recruit (restricted privileges, continued cabin inspections, not knowing yet being expected to know the 'rules') all over again is a bit draining. It's like just when I was fresh from marching out and gaining the rank of Aircraftwoman, it doesn't really count when I have no idea about how the Navy works, and I'm not quite being treated like a person of rank (albeit the lowest).
Thankfully, home isn't too far away. So for the next handful of months it doesn't really matter how gruelling or draining my week may feel, I actually get a chance to blow off steam and temporarily escape le militoire on the weekends, or any other opportunity I'm given. I have rekindled my love for the ordinary, and somewhat romanticise the idea of civiliandom like it's something I'll never have again. As much as I want to go crazy Broadway style on the weekends, I usually just eat, sleep, and hang out with civvies. Nothing newsworthy, but it means the world to me. Maybe I'm having trouble completely letting go of my former life, and it's something I might need to do in order to adequately embrace this new one, but I'm still not sure that I want to live and breathe the military.
Now that I'm at a base where there's internet access, I'll try my best to keep updating! When I get more of a chance to sit down and write something a little more structured, I'll get stuck into my thoughts on boot camp, and military culture, which is one thing that fascinates me about this place, if only from an anthropological amateur's point of view.
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