PAL - The Training & Execution

The first day of PAL training (Monday the 6th) went well. Everybody had enthusiasm. There was groups from other courses (FdA Interior Architechture & FdA Photography) so the intimidation factor was there to get nervous about and overcome. Of course, by the end of the day everybody was smiling and chatting and it did actually feel like a giant 'team'.

I, being a lightweight insomniatic birthday boy, spent the second day of training recovering in bed. Regrettable as the groups were defined and training plans made. I became a 'floater' which I'm still confused about now. I don't know if I'm a sub or a supervisor or a bizarre combination of the both. I can move about groups when needed. I think it'd be moreso needed as an extra body rather than my specific skills but putting that angle on it makes it sound a lot less flattering than the previous.

Planning before the execution day (Monday the 13th) was minimal. All I had was a jail line-up-esque picture sheet which was of no particular use other than knowing that there was a lot of faces to remember and an equal amount of names to pair up with these. I don't know if being a floater, I need to know all forty-six face to names but for now I'm sticking with my group.
I was with Lianne, Jimmy and Dan which as a group, I think worked well. It was a little intimidating at first but it's amazing how much having peers and more importantly friends around can keep you on track on unintimidated. Yeah we could have planned it out a lot more but I think our nervousness worked for us rather than against us because we could laugh at ourselves and the first years could laugh along melting a few barriers. Flapjack was a winner, even if just in the case of having buckets left over from my extremely zealous portion sizes. We played a naff cheesy ice-breaker, introduced PAL to them as a concept then split into groups and had a general discussion to conclude what would be on next week's agenda. Of which PPRD and sketchbooks seemed to be the most prevalent so we're taking in examples of ours aswell as having requested them to bring anything they have in.

I look forward to it! Big question is though, what to bake this time?