Well, here it goes... My first post...
I'm currently in a timewarp. The pace at which this training course is going is such a blur, I've never known time to fly so much at work. It's called IPLDP (Initial Police Learning and Development Portfolio) but even that is abbreviated and rushed in pronunciation so it has now been re-Christened 'Ipple-Dip' which annoys me no end. Why it can't be called 'Basic Training' or something simple? Just by reading the daft title you can tell it was created by pinko-lefty graduates in search of their next Home Office promotion. Along with the SOLAP (the Student Officer Learning and Assessment Portfolio) - but we won't even go there for the time being.
Everything I learn has to be carefully documented in 'Learning Diaries' every week along with how it made me feel, what I got out of the experience, and most important of all, how it links in with the 'behaviours' that every modern, 21st century police officer must show towards the public. Ironically, it's actually harder filling in that sort of stuff than it is learning how to actually BE A BOBBY, which is supposed to be the point of why I am there, surely?
But like I say, the time is going that quickly that my 'Ipple-Dip' course will be over before I know it. I was a Special Constable before this and, unlike some SC's I came across, I was more than a uniform-carrier and a locker-taker-upperer so I KNOW that this is the job for me. I KNOW the Job is full of setbacks, heartache, frustration, banality, tedium, bullsh*t and paperwork but somehow I KNOW that the things that remain to positively counteract the negativity will make it all worthwhile in the end. My 'coppers nose' tells me so!
