So....last night was fucking awesome!!!!

Much like elementary school kids, my friends and I look forward to the times when we know we are going to have field trips for school. Yes, even though we are college students, we still get field trips. No bag lunches or anything, but they are still pretty cool. During our first quarter, we went to the Sarpy County jail for our Intro to Criminal Justice class, which was interesting. J'Maylia had a fan by the time we left, even though the guard tried to block her from the guy's sight, didn't work out.

Now we are in our third quarter, and this trip was for our Policing class. Same teacher as our Intro class, and by far our favorite at the school. As she used to be a police officer here in Omaha, we have already learned a lot from her, and plan to take as many classes with her possible, she rocks. Anyway, last night's trip was to the local VA hospital, which has its own police department. We had a tour of the actual hospital, all 10 floors of it, and we did learn a lot from it. It's not the real reason we went though. The cool part came during the second half of the trip.

The police training simulator..... >:)

It was so damn awesome, I can't even describe it. We got to use the same simulator they use to train actual cops, we got to use REAL guns (modified for the simulator, but still usable if need be), pepper spray, the whole bit. There was only one thing left out that they did not do for us, which believe it or not, we were fully bummed about. When police are being trained with this, there will be an officer who shoots them with an Air Soft gun if they get shot during the simulation exercise. They didn't do that with us. Yes, we really wanted them to.

So we went through a variety of scenarios, in pairs. There was traffic stops, vets in the hospital and off their meds, school shootings, and a variety of other things. Besides having loads of fun, those of us who took it seriously really learned a lot. Some of us stayed far longer than the others just to have the opportunity to keep learning and taking more turns.

Apparently a few quarters down the line, and we are going to actually go out with police officers and do these things in a real-life situation. Well...simulated, but not on the screen.

I absolutely can't wait.

My full concentration is now on school and the military, nothing else.