Thoughts on "training"

On this morning's supply run to B&B Honey Farm in Houston (MN), my husband and I caught part of the interview with Alan Bean and Andrew Chaiken about Apollo 12 and NASA's lunar missions. Mr. Bean--no relation to the Rowan Atkinson character--was quick to point out that although his title was "Pilot," he did not actually land the lunar module. He further noted that after the module had safely touched down, his partner (Charles Conrad, Jr.) said that the last 100 feet of descent had taken every bit of skill and training he had.

Later in the interview, the performance-under-pressure theme resurfaced in the recap of the nerve-wracking last-minute manual override landing that Apollo 11's Neil Armstrong had to perform. At that point I (finally) understood something that should have been obvious: The "peaceful," "scientific" lunar explorations were made by combat veterans and test pilots for a darned good reason. That reason being not so much the training, but the instinct to let the training take over when nothing is going right and everything is on the line.

The irony of that realization is that it didn't sink in (for me) until it was too late. An hour or two later we popped the top off the first hive, and the "Bzzzzzzzz!!!" that rose from within had an owly edge to it, an edge I recognized from years past, but never from this crew. But I brushed that thought aside, and continued fiddling with the brand-new smoker, which was leaking smoke from under the lid--and into my eyes.

We had just started to check the Queen's egg-laying pattern in the bottom-most of the two brood boxes when I felt the "Zaaaap!" above my right knee. She'd stung me right through my jeans, something none of them has ever done before. Which is also when an errant blast of smoke hit me square in the face.

What I should have done immediately is pump smoke into the vicinity (particularly where I'd been stung), so as to mask the bee pheromone that tells the other hive-defenders: "Hey! I found a vulnerable spot! Sting here!" What I did--beyond uttering one or two unprintable things--was to scoot off about five feet to check for a stinger, incidentally leaving my husband more or less in the lurch. He called, "You still have two after you: Better blow some smoke around yourself." So I did, and plenty more besides as we reassembled the hive that should have been left alone today.

The palm-sized spread of crabby-looking, lotion-slathered skin above my kneecap is the wages of ignoring the "training" I've been given by generations of honeybees since 2003. And it also made me think that, of all the "training" that I and Wisconsin/Minnesota/US taxpayers have purchased for my benefit, perhaps only Math matches the "real world." On Math tests, you're rarely asked to spit out memorized facts or to compare and contrast anything or to critique an algorithm. No, you're given a limited amount of time and a limited amount of information (and a limited amount of work area) in which to construct a solution according to accepted sound principles. Which sounds remarkably like problem-solving on any given workday.

Now, I won't claim to know whether or not it's possible to make the tests/quizzes for other subjects quite so anxiety-inducing as Math tests can be. But I do know that, while I'm doing well if I remember to use the first derivative on maximum/minimum optimization problems (because I don't do that for a living), and I certainly don't remember how to use the law of Sines or the law of Cosines to figure out missing angles, I do know how to keep a lid on test anxiety for any certification test I may take during my career. That's training. The rest is stuff I can look up.