posted by Chris on Thursday Feb 1st 2007, 9:34 pm

For the last 4 days, I've been attending and EMT class in College Station, TX. To be certified and work as a paid fire fighter in Texas, you must also be certified as a Basic EMT. So for 3 weeks, I've moved to Aggie Land out in the middle of nowhere to study emergency medical care. We've been in class for 4 days and we've already had 2 exams and will be having another tomorrow. This course is normally taught 2 nights a week for 4 to 6 months, but I'm taking a condensed course which is 8 hours a day, 5 days a week for 3 weeks. I've spent a lot of late nights studying. But it has paid off so far. I got an 86% (2nd highest in class - highest was 87%) on the first exam and a 92% (I think the highest) on the second. I've spent the last 4 hours studying for tomorrows exam and will probably spend another hour or 2 tonight plus an hour or 2 in the morning. We don't have an exam on Monday, so at least I'll be able to relax a bit over the weekend. I didn't think I'd really enjoy this class, but I have so far. I'm actually looking forward to the clinical internships. We have to spend 2 shifts on an ambulance and 5 in a hospital. I don't know how I'll react to the blood and guts, but I think I'll be ok. Hopefully.

Anyway, back to studying. I'll try to post a few pictures over the weekend if I can remember.

posted by Chris on Tuesday Dec 19th 2006, 9:35 am

That's the fire academy over with now. 16 weeks! I'm glad it's over now so I can get back to work. I still have to finish my EMT class before I can work as a fire fighter though. We had a lot of fun during live-fire week. We all learned a lot. We did some rescue drills as well as some fire drills.

posted by Chris on Monday Nov 13th 2006, 11:17 am

That's week 12 over. We had 2 days of high-angle rescue. We went down to Austin and did some repelling from AFD's old training tower. It was a lot of fun. We also started some patient packaging along with raising and lowering a disabled patient in a basket. I climbed off the roof (75 feet up) at least half a dozen times. We also did some line transfers and pick-off's (climbed down a couple of floors and pulled someone from the window, hooked them on to us and climbed the rest of the way down.

We now have this week and 3 days of next week in the classroom and a week of live fire. After that, we have our exams and graduation on Dec. 9th. I can't wait!