A very steep learning curve.
Tima84,
From your data you are 26; whether you like hearing it or not, you are young and inexperienced. We have all been there; at 26 you are still extremely young.
You have 230 hours of flight time. Professionally you are a novice; to your credit you did use the “only” word describing your flight time. At least you recognize your limited background. It is likely that you have never flown a single hour for compensation yet, let alone flying through several winter seasons making command decisions. Other than the knowledge required to pass the exams you have virtually no foundation. None of this is your “fault” nor are you a “bad person” it is just the reality of your aviation background and contributes to the dread you say that you feel going to the simulator.
Your performance stinks and you can’t “fix it” there is too much going on: it’s dark, the profiles and checklists are complicated, time pressure, one event followed by another, evaluating performance that is supposed to be up to par-but you have never seen this before or gone through anything similar, running checklists regarding system abnormalities on systems don’t really understand because you have never seen anything like them before. Then there is the FMS……(Dear GOD, what is it doing now?)….and that was the first sim session. You are trying to drink out of a fire hose connected to your face………and it is ugly.
You are in an Airbus training regime; you are in way over your head, and your performance shows it. Your recent past failures and embarrassment terrify you to the point you are unable to perform. Ok that’s the bad news. Have I correctly understood your current predicament?
Having been involved in an airline training programme I can offer you the following advice. Effort and attitude contribute mightily. Accept your instructors critique and try as hard as possible to incorporate all of their advice. If the instructor is worth anything that instructor will know about your limited background and tailor their instruction to your needs. As pilots most of us have a strong tendency towards perfectionism, we hate making mistakes and we tend to beat ourselves up after we make them. However beating yourself up before, during and after the simulator session does not improve performance. Tima84, at this point you may be sabotaging your chance for success.
Many of us had 10 – 20 years in the industry before we were in an Airbus/Boeing and we still got nervous going through training. Being nervous is completely natural. It becomes a problem if that nervousness prevents us from performing. You are in the training programme; either somebody believed you could get through the training and contribute to their financial bottom line flying airplanes for them, or you were lied to and they were more interested in you paying them for unused simulator time. Either way you are where you are so make the best of it. Here is my advice; relax as best as you can, do not emotionally beat yourself to a pulp, glean every experience from your current Airbus training and hopefully you will get through and get out on the line-where your training will continue.
Attitude, humility and effort will carry you a very long way. They will have to because you do not have 10 winters, 3 type ratings and 8,000+ hours of experince to carry you through-it simply is not there.
Please get back to us and let us know how you fared.
Hoping for your every success,