College: Problems with stress-related "anger"

[Quintilian]

Hey!

Just got my course-management reports for the 2 first months on the aerodrome instrument rating-course. Appareantly I've got a problem related to "unexpected stuff"; which makes me "frustrated, freak out, loose my focus and commit generic errors ...."

I've done about 200 excercies/runs during my basic-/Approach-module and never gotten any comments related to this stuff...

Anybody else had any experiences related to this? My instructor tells me that he has "no idea how to fix this", and basically that I have to "figure out" how to relate to this.

Suggestions?

/TH

[Standard Noise]

What exactly do you mean by 'unexpected stuff'?
If it has only come to light with periodical reports rather than 'after exercise' debriefs, then you should speak to the course manager.

[Scooby Don't]

It is fairly normal for a young man, at times, to be an angry young man. The problem in ATC is that anger usually comes when it's least useful. Under stress of sheer numbers, or unexpected and unusual situations, a natural response is to get a little short-tempered. Age and experience are probably the best cures of all, bringing the knowledge that anger isn't helpful!

There are some controllers around for whom all their pilots are a**holes. [attn pilots - read on before getting offended!] In reality, if every pilots seems to an a**hole, the real a**hole is probably the controller. A controller getting steamed up by an unusual situation, especially one who is already busy, is likely to miss wrong readbacks and quite possibly to give wrong instructions despite knowing the right instuction to give. There can even be a temptation to throw your hands in the air and say "to hell with it", which obviously helps no one.

So, how to deal with what is in part a natural response to stress? The first thing is to train yourself to doing something counter-intuitive. THE BUSIER YOU ARE, THE SLOWER YOU MUST TALK! Seriously, this is a great trick. It has two effects. Firstly, it minimizes the risk of having to repeat instructions - pilots are more likely to hear you correctly the first time. Secondly, it calms everyone down, youself included.

When faced with something unusual, the first thing to do is nothing. You need time to think, so take a couple of seconds to collect your thoughts. If you have to say "roger mayday" or similar to keep an instructor happy, so be it, but take a step back while you think about what you need to do to resolve a situation.

In the college environment, it is a very good idea to find an instructor you trust and can talk to. By all means print off some of what gets written on this thread and discuss the advice you get here with your instructor. Those of us reading you post don't know the details of the unusual situations thrown your way, or your reaction to them, whereas your instructor will know.

Good luck!

[Quintilian]

Hey again, and thanks for answering.

Up til now we have only had 10 exercises with this instructor and this being the second report (written after the last 5 excercises).

The first report has this to say about the frustration-problem:
"Initiative and Accuracy:
- Sometimes you take the initiative to expedite the traffic (intersection departure, short app, speed up cars). If they are not able to do it, don't get frustrated, take it as a challenge. You sometimes get a little bit frustrated when they not are able to comply with your requests. And remember; the earlier you are able to pass the request, the higher is the possibility for a positive answer".

When I got this report I asked the instructor how I was doing overall, and he said "above average". The second report came only 4 exercises later, and with a much more negative tone. I had then had a really bad run where I made a mess out of an unexpected event and afterwards got behind in regards of traffic-handling. He relates this to me reacting with frustration/anger over my own cockup and leading to loss of capacity.

The second report I didn't receive in full (only got the main conclusion), and it states:
"X is a well educated student which knows the theory well. He nees to use this to his advantage to learn the basics and standards very well. When all the standard phraseology, traffic and coordination is at a high level, X is ready to handle unexpected situations."

Basically I'm a bit at a loss about what to do. As the instructor wrote in the 2. report I should know all the "basics"; thus freeing up capacity to handle the unexpected situations, but I find it difficult to be able to improve in this regard outside of the simulator. I'm already a quite interested student, and spend a lot more time than avg. studying or preparing for the upcoming exercises.

The "talk slow" tip I've heard countless times before; but in this regard thing is actually coming along quite nicely: "The speed of speech is constant, and clear, even when the traffic is at a high level. This is good, if you increases the speed you often get "say again", and you loses time and capacity"

Don't really know how to manage the frustration-bit; as was stated above "age and experience tend to help", but I can hurry neither - and I need to perform now; not in 5 years.

Cheers
TH

Post Scriuptum:
By unexpected stuff I mean exactly that; unexpected stuff :)
Take an example, during a rwy-change I had one a/c taxiing to holding point and another on ground-freq approaching yankee (twy parallell to rwy). The next inbound (after last landing before rwy-change) was 35-40 miles out. I figured that I could depart the two a/c's in quick succession on diff. headings away from the inbound-track and thus getting both a/c off before the rwy-change. The instructor thought otherwise and instructed app to call me and only accept one more departure on the "old rwy". Thus I suddenly had an A320 on holding point for the wrong rwy without the ability to turn around on twy. This is a typical situation where I get stressed and frustrated with myself, leading to me being snappy (in the negative sense) towards colleauges and on the frequency, and diverting too much energy to this particular "situation" in expenditure of handling the normal operations.

[Scooby Don't]

In the situation you describe, as in so many situations, don't think about what you can't do (turn the a/c on the taxiway), but about what you can do! You have an arrival 35 nm away, so we'll call that 7 minutes or so. You have a runway, at which your A320 is now pointing. You have exits from the runway, should 7 minutes be too short a time to backtrack the A320 the entire length of the runway. I'm guessing in that situation, the instructor wanted to see you getting the a/c away as the first dep from the new direction, preferably before the first arrival.

Anyhoo, what you typed here of your report really doesn't seem all that negative to me.