As for motivation. Did your wife go the first 2 days of groundschool with you? Mine went to the spouse's orientation and she made sure to end every conversation during the first few months with "Kaching, back the dumptruck up to the Bfund" to keep me motivated. It worked. That Bfund is gonna buy a HUGE boat, and a bunch of sirens who aren't even born yet to crew it as well if my marriage doesn't last that long <G>.
One of the other nice things was when the Miami chiefs did their orientation in the Miami base, they repeatedly said that they were there to help up make it to 60 so that we could collect our retirement.
Once you got past a career's buildup of cynicism, you realized that once you made it out of the school house everyone was looking to help you succede. After spending a 13 year career as a target in everyone's crosshairs I didn't know how to react to that and thought it must be a joke, but its real and its a nice feeling. The older guys that tell you that you are a target for management came strait out of the military and never worked for Tower/Ryan. Those few that you might find that were at Eastern or Rosenbaum etc know what being a target is really about and can give you a much clearer view from a perspective that you are used to. If you do something truly stupid expect to pay for it (unlike in the military, the blue angles getting lost over DC comes to mind) but you have played the game for a decade and know how its played and would never do anything truly stupid. This is EASY my friend. Hard work was night freight, Charter pax and International nonsked with NO duty limits. Those days are over and done.
Make sure to go home on your 48s and when you are riding home think about whether Tower or Evergreen would have shipped you home during ground school for the weekends. It was things like that which changed my expectations for what an airline career can be. You are still stuck with Tower expectations with American groudschool workloads...
Cheers
Wino
[This message has been edited by Wino (edited 02 January 2001).]