First day of class.

I mean annual, apprenticeship class. I've been taking mandatory extracurricular classes all summer.

So, my instructor is Javier, the same one I worked with at Red Rock right before the grand opening. He's laid back and I've heard from his former students that he's pretty thorough. Ryan and Cliff are in my class, who I get on well with, plus Paul from my crew and CJ, who was in my class 2nd year and who was on the same crew with me when Les was my foreman. Also Hawk, who I worked with for awhile. Honestly, though, they integrated an extra class in this year so many of these people I've never met. But it's okay...no one really wants to be there 5 hours every Wednesday night, so we all do what we can to make things interesting.

Since this is the first year the school has done 5 hours a night for class, everyone's running into problems. For most classes, it's just a matter of how many breaks should be allowed and how exactly to stretch the study material over that amount of time. However, the 5th year classes are seriously having issues...they might not graduate on time. It's a requirement they spend 25% of their total class time at the monthly union meeting, plus they have to fit in F-card training and foreman classes, plus their regular course material, plus review for the JATC wireman exam and the Clark County journeyman exam...there simply isn't enough time. So they might have to go extra days a week. That's common for 1st year classes (it's hard to grasp basic aspects of Ohm's Law and such if you've never done it) but 5th year...that's supposed to be the easy, laid-back year. So I feel a little apprehensive, actually. Hopefully they'll straighten things out by the time I finish this year, and my 5th year will be what everyone says it's supposed to be.