Originally Posted by
Flying Elvis
At your own peril.
I'm pretty good at standardized tests and cramming stuff into short-term memory. I had exactly 7 days from Indoc to training start. I took Sat/Sun off from studying - put all the books and my laptop in a bag and didn't open them at all.
However, I spent the other 5 days putting about 8+ hours each day into hard-core studying at a coffee shop. Had my notes open on the flight back to ATL, and studied the evenings prior to the test.
That plus the test material review was probably a bit of overkill for the ESV itself, but set me up for the procedural training so I wasn't hunting for answers and could work on the procedures themselves.
Failures are happening at the procedural level, by pilots a lot smarter than me. Especially if you haven't done 121 stuff before, this, it's not a cake walk.
My call: keep things in balance. Take some time off but definitely put in the effort as well. No need to start your DAL career with a training failure.
This^^^^
Especially if you're new to 121. There is a lot of information to take in. Do yourself a favor and set up a good knowledge base before showing up. There isn't enough time once you're in the training footprint to play catchup. Ideally you'll spend each night studying ahead for the following day's event instead of frantically trying to catch up.
Much better to be over prepped (just like your interview) than start out behind - especially while on probation.