This writeup is not a cry for sympathy. I have no illusions of being a personality here. However, taking into consideration the many ATC writeups I have subjected E2 to - how it began, ramblings about how some of it works and how I've progressed - I feel I would be remiss in not offering what is an afterword of sorts.
I got fired as a trainee air traffic controller today.
I was training as an Area (en-route) controller. In June, almost at the end of the course, I failed an oral assessment. A week later, I failed the resit. Training suspended. Today at about 15:00, after almost two months of waiting, a 2hr training review (a sort of panel interview with two managers) concluded with the termination of my ATC training.
According to the written rationale I later received, I failed to demonstrate an appreciation of the requirement to think outside the box.
This verdict was based - somewhat incongruously, I feel - on my practical work, which I thought was progressing reasonably well. Furthermore, the oral assessment was about two weeks before the practical assessments, so I didn't get chance to demonstrate one way or the other that I was up to the job before being suspended. Having to defend my practical work after failing a theory assessment never sat very well with me, but them's the breaks.
Aside from the tremendous loss (the job's your life), I'm currently wondering what would be occupying all of the space in my brain that's crammed full of now-redundant information, if I hadn't taken the job. *shrug* There may be a little MATS barbecue in the offing.
Yes, I'm upset. Probably bitter. Not defeated, I hope. One has to get on, after all.
...
I was always good at regurgitating theory. Not quite as good at putting it into practice.
What next? Your guess is as good as mine.
Still, I'll never forget the feeling of controlling seventeen aircraft at once and knowing exactly what I was doing. I know it wasn't real, but I've never known anything like it. I hope I might know it again eventually.