The "Dream Sheet"

The "Dream Sheet" is the list of available office locations and the number of positions in those offices for new officers. The cadets have a few days to put them in order of preference. If any of the locations are within 60 minutes from your home (per MapQuest), then certain other factors are considered... whether you own a home, whether you have a school age child, whether you have children of any age. We have all of these things... not to mention a few other major "considerations"... but since none of the 150 available positions (in 31 different cities) are within the 60 minute rule, it doesn't matter. We knew that this was a possibility from the start. It was part of our dozens of late-night-into-the-morning heart-to-heart talks regarding John pursuing this career path. So... for us, the "dream sheet" is really no "dream" at all. It was just a fact sheet.

For John, the placement will be based on two things: his class ranking and the last four digits of his social security number... and we'll just go on record saying that his SSN is really low and the high numbers get priority. John received the list last Monday (the 15th) and we met for dinner during his Wednesday night liberty to finalize our pickings. (We had to prioritize all 31 locations.)

We find out Monday morning (the 22nd) where he will be assigned. It's so surreal. We will know Monday where we will (likely) be moving. My (slightly) educated guess (based some info we have from more than half of the cadets in his class) is that it will be the Oakland office or somewhere in Southern California. I really don't think that any other part of the Bay Area is a possibility.

We'll see... my motto on this particular subject is... "It is what it is."