Nervous in the service

Posted on Tue Feb 14th, 2012 @ 9:15am by Private 1st Class Elizabeth Malone

[Private Malone's Personal log, stardate 66109.9]

"So, I just heard about my first mission. It sounds, I don't know, dangerous I guess. We're supposed to take over a Romulan base and find a guy and three researchers who might be working on a project involving some very dangerous weapons. I'm not completely sure how I feel. I wanted to say scared, but that's not it. Or maybe I just don't want to be scared. I shouldn't be, it could really mess things up if I was. Fear is a powerful, but dangerous motivator. Oh, I sound like my father now. But still, I know should be able to do this. I finished my basic training, that should mean I could do this. Yet there is always that never ending doubt."

"I know I had my basic training, I know that they try to make me even better here, with their training sessions, but maybe that's just the problem. It's just a training session. They can be tough, but at the end of the day there's always a place to rest, people laugh and if anything does go wrong everything can be stopped and there is a medic just around the corner. The same goes for the holodeck training really. They look real, they sound real, but somewhere in the back of my mind I know I'm completely safe. I can fall, I can be shot, I can fail and even then nothing really bad happened so far."

"Out there it will be different. No more retry options, no more safety protocols, failing is failing. Every mistake could be my last one. I know I shouldn't think like that, it's not going to help, but if I look at some of the others, I, I just don't know. I don't want to be the new girl, with no clue what is going to happen. I should be an asset to this team, not a reliability. Some of them worry about me, I know Sarajevo does. I'm not sure about Keyes, but he has seen me try and struggle. I've tried so hard to convince them that I can do this, maybe I should have spent more time convincing myself."

"Our gear is perfect, nothing malfunctions, everything is kept in perfect shape. Sarajevo and Keyes have done so much for me already. They both seem to be very good at what they do. They won't fail, nor will the rest of the team. I've seen them fight, they are good, they know what they do. I'm certain it won't be their actions that could cause this mission to fail. The only thing in this whole story I cannot count on is me. I am the new girl, I have no experience and I don't know what it will be like, what I will be like.

"It's times like these that I miss my father. I could have asked him what his first mission was like. Maybe he would have told me how he felt back then. He never spoke much about how he felt, but as strange as it may sound, I always hoped that that would change once he would see me wear the same uniform. Now I'll never know. I can just guess what he would have said. I think he would call me an idiot for letting my fears and doubts get to me this much. On the other hand, maybe he could have told me that it was perfectly normal to feel this way and that I shouldn't worry about it too much."

"Maybe I am scared. It is a very dangerous mission after all. That probably contributes a bit to how I feel, but what I'm probably most scared of, is me."

[End log]