The ball is rolling... but is it going the right direction?

Well, I've had my 40 hours of initiation at Mountain View. I'm getting sent off to the Tullahoma training acadamy Sunday evening, which starts my 3 weeks of formal training. My fellow trainees and I get to use a state van to travel there, and we get to come home on the weekends. Then its 3 days with an officer for on-the-job training, then they let us loose on the kids.

I have little doubt that I can do the job. I just don't know if I can do it and still remain the same person. I've always been sheltered from the element that these kids come from. Now its going to be right up in my face adn I have to deal with it straight and hard, or else they will eat me. But I don't know if I can do that and not bring it home. I want this job; it has good pay and good benefits, but I want to remain the same person to my family. I don't want to turn into my father when he was a police officer. He was an alcoholic and verbally abusive to us. It wasn't a happy time for me growing up.

I gotta go take care of dinner now, possibly more to come later.