What the training manual will not tell you: the unofficial curriculum of a cabin crew course, from the trainee side
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#1 Week 6 of Emirates training and the course has an official curriculum and an unofficial one, and the unofficial one is at least as important and is taught entirely by accident. For the people about to start, here is what I have learned that was not on a slide.
How to be briefed
Where to stand, when to speak, how to answer a question in one sentence, how to say 'I do not know' without it being a problem. The instructors brief us every morning the way a purser briefs a crew and the course is, partly, teaching us to be briefed. I did not notice for three weeks.
How to be tired and function
The course is designed to be tiring. Not cruelly. Deliberately, because the job is. The 6:20 bus, the study, the one day off. By week four you are doing the door drill on five hours of sleep and doing it right, and that is the lesson: the drill works when you are tired because it is in the hands, not the head.
How to be corrected in public
The instructor fixes your drill in front of 24 people. The first time is humiliating. The fifth time is Tuesday. The job is full of pursers fixing things in front of the crew and the course is teaching you to hear it as information.
How to look like the standard
Grooming is a module but it is also every morning: the instructors look at 24 people and one of them is told about a strand of hair, and the other 23 check theirs. By week three the batch looks like a crew and nobody said 'look like a crew'.
How to eat in four minutes
The lunch break is short, the canteen is busy, and you learn to eat standing and fast without deciding to. This is the crew meal in the galley, rehearsed.
How to make two friends and keep 22 colleagues
The batch is 24 people who did not choose each other. Two become friends. The rest become colleagues, which is a different skill and one the job needs more. Being good with 22 people you did not choose is most of the career.
How to ask for help before it is too late
The people who failed exams on my batch waited until the night before to say they were struggling. The instructors could have helped on the Monday. The unofficial lesson: say it early, to an instructor, in one sentence. They have heard it a thousand times.
How to cry in the right place
Not in the classroom. In the accommodation, with the flatmate, briefly, and then the flashcards. Everyone on the batch has done it. Nobody has done it in the classroom. That is also training.
What was on your unofficial curriculum?
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#2 Two batches ahead and every line is right, and I would add: how to sleep on a bus. The 6:20 bus is 25 minutes and by week two it is 25 minutes of sleep and it counts.
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#3 Ryanair Dublin, and the 'corrected in public' one is the lesson I needed and did not know I was getting. The fifth time is Tuesday. Yes.
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#4 'Being good with 22 people you did not choose is most of the career' should be the first slide of every course. Three weeks flying and it is the whole job.
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#5 @georgiaedi it is the whole job. The instructors know. They just cannot put it on a slide.
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#6 Riyadh, and the 'ask for help early, in one sentence' is what I did not do and what cost me the first exam. Reading it on a list from another trainee makes it concrete. It is on the list now.
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#7 Purser, and I can tell you the unofficial curriculum is the one we check on the first flight. Can they be briefed, can they take a correction, do they look like the standard. The slides are for the exam. The rest is for the aircraft.