So you're...not a correctional officer anymore?
I'm still a correctional officer, I just joined our S.O.R.T team too. I tried out for it back in November but didn't make the tryouts then because I screwed up on the sit-up portion of the physical test and burnt myself out early. They had another tryout last month and I made it. :3 Being on the sort team is kind of like how police join the swat team, they're still police.. they just have extra duties and can be called off to take care of bigger situations.
The first tryouts I went out for, only 2 others aside myself tried out for the team. One guy wasn't even a certified officer yet, though he did pass all the stuff, they didn't want him because he wouldn't be able to do anything. The other guy had a bad attitude, though he passed all the stuff too, they didn't want him. I was told they really wanted me to join and to work on my sit-ups. So I did. On the second tryouts in January quite a lot of people showed up to tryout but I was the only one who actually made the team. Seriously, my sort commander gave me (almost) all of my gear like right after I finished with the tryouts that day.
And what weekend it was, the tryouts were held on thursday and friday. I went to the thursday tryouts. Now, the memo said they were at 8am, but apparently the commander read it wrong or forgot because when I got there at 7:45 I drove past everyone as they were doing the run, the last part of the tryouts. Not to mention I had worked the night before (I work 6pm - 6am shifts) and I had to work later that day. Well, after they finished the run (about 4-5 people showed up that day) my commander had a meeting to go to that lasted about an hour and a half. So, somewhere around 10 am is when I actually started doing my solo tryout, because he said he would get to me if I stayed around and that he was sorry he mistakenly started it early. I was really tired at this point, but I still did all the physical stuff (read: 18 push-ups < 2mins, 35 sit-ups < 2mins, and a mile and a half run < 15mins). Stayed up to get my gear, and by the time I got home it was about 11:30am.
So I nab my few hours of sleep, get up, get ready for work and work another 12 hours. Oh, I forgot to mention, they told me they had S.O.R.T. training on Friday at 7am. Well, thankfully I work with one of the guys on the team normally, he said he'd vouch for me so I wouldn't have to show up for the PT at 7 so I could show up at 8 and let me grab a little sleep. Basically I got about 30-45 mins of sleep before getting up and going to training at 8am. We had training until 3pm (but we went out for lunch and goofed off for about an hour and a half at noon). It was fun, I was dead tired during the whole thing, but I got paid for it so I can't argue that much. It helped me get to meet everyone else on the team and they were all pretty nice to me. I was off the rest of the weekend, but it took me about a week and a half to recover my normal sleeping pattern.
Good stuff!
