When we arrived, the rest of our cohort was already lounging in the chairs that had little desks attached to them. Ruby recognized someone from her class, a girl named Lily, and they fell to talking about statistics and the boys in their class with glee.

The front of the classroom contained a projector. The leprechaun was standing at a podium, waving his hands for attention. “Now that everyone is here. My name is Carl. I’m the Captain of EMS, which means I make sure that we stay on our A-game 24/7.”

Carl went on to explain that he would be telling us about the organization’s structure rules and policy for the first half of the day, that they would teach us CPR in the afternoon, and they would train us on the radios and about the equipment the next day. He told us that if we were already EMTs we could leave for the CPR portion but that everything else was mandatory, “which meant no long bathroom breaks.” Everyone shifted in their seats, probably wishing they had gone to the bathroom before they sat down.

Carl launched into his spiel about EMS. “This organization was founded in 1987 by a small group of dedicated individuals, committed to keeping their college campus safe. We have grown from an organization of just 7 people, to one of 40, of which you make up 25 of those people.”

I glanced around. Our class was enormous; we made up more than half of the entire organization.

A slightly chubby girl behind me, wearing a “Sleep with an EMT, Stay safe at night” shirt snickered. “If they can hack it for long enough.”

Carl continued, but we had all heard. “There are some rules you should all know. You cannot drink alcohol less than twelve hours before a shift. If you are underage, you are expected to follow the law. No drugs. When you are in uniform, you represent our organization so act professionally. All trip sheets must be submitted less than twenty-four hours after the call that it is documenting.”

“And try not to be a crazy psychopath,” the girl behind me said. The EMS members stiffened and looked at us to see if we knew what they were talking about. But how could we. We had just been accepted.

“Other than that, try to have fun. Enjoy the training. You guys are going to really enjoy your time with us.” He motioned to someone in the back. “Can you pass these out?”

The person he had motioned to passed the sheets of paper out.

“Is this a quiz?” someone said.

Carl smiled. “Nervous? This is just to see if you were paying attention.”

I raised my hand. “Can I have a pen?”

A few people around me reached into their backpacks. I picked the one least covered in backpack lint.

“You may begin,” Carl said.

I got through a lot of questions, but looking around, I could see that no one could remember what year EMS had been founded in.

I had taken a guess and said 1982. But the others weren’t even trying to guess. I handed my sheet in and went back to sit at my seat with nothing to do. Ruby finished right after me and Lily finished right after her. We all sat there, observing the graying carpet we had already scrutinized.

When everyone was finished, Carl flipped through the papers and sighed. “First order of business, you need to learn how to listen. All of you got the date of the founding wrong. Let me know when you figure out what the correct answer is.”

Next, Akul stood up and walked to the podium. He didn’t stand there to speak though. He needed to insert a DVD and the player was located on the shelf. “CPR time, guys! Let’s go.”

He made everyone pick a partner and find a CPR mannequin, models of the top half of men covered in plastic with gaping faces. Ruby and her friend knelt beside one and I came over and joined them.

I was afraid that I would look as ridiculous as I ended up looking. CPR is not a glamorous thing although it looks great in T.V. shows. Akul and the droning video instructor assured us that with their contrived video skits with middle-aged men falling to the ground and clutching their chests.

We began to laugh, out of fear that someday, someone’s lives would be in our hands, and that fear made our learning seem ludicrous, because who were we to try to play God like this?

“Remember to activate the emergency response system,” the video instructor monotoned.

“Activate,” we said, punching our fists in the air like superheroes.

We practiced compressions, our hips moving too much because we didn’t know where to place our knees or our jokes and so we felt tired after only a few rounds. We were assured that in a real situation, we could be doing this for ten minutes. I promised myself I would start working out, lifting weights perhaps. I would have to find a tutorial so I didn’t die by dumbbell accident. That would be dumb.

And throughout the entire video, they told war stories. They always began with “So I was on the call with the…” and they would start with the patient or perhaps, if it was worthy, the injury or condition. CPR would have taken no time at all if they hadn’t been telling their stories but I wonder if we would have gotten the real experience. It seemed like the war stories were a tradition, with everyone trying to one-up the other with goriness or the skills they had been able to practice. They talked about X-Acto knife slips during finals and professors losing consciousness during class. Every one of them had been able to be there, where the action was.

They walked around to all of us, correcting our form, our posture, the rate at which we were performing compressions. They did it so calmly, like this was second nature to them, like they did a few compressions before their morning coffee.

Akul had us perform CPR individually, so he could make sure we were doing it correctly and then dismissed us, telling us he would see us tomorrow for the fun stuff. We all funneled ourselves out the door, still making jokes about CPR and the cheesy skits they had shown us. We had something in common now. This was my EMS class. I was now a part of it. I couldn’t wait until the next day, when we could learn even more about each other.