Southerner

Training is for learning to fly the airplane. IOE and after is when you should learn how to bid. If you are taught the intricacies of bidding prior to qualification training, you'll forget it all by the time you finish training. The instructors have been told to NOT cover how to bid, as it ends up taking up a lot of time during indoc, and it's basically worthless to the new hires anyway since they won't remember a word of it. People used to go into it, but were told to stop due to the classes running long. Plus, most of the instructors have literally NEVER bid before, so they aren't really able to teach it effectively. There are some guys who came in from the line, but many/most have no line bidding experience here. (Hired directly into training, then got numbers later, so never flew a line.)

There's a "day in the life" class that used to be taught after IOE that covers how to bid, etc. I don't know if it is still going or not. Call the scheduling committee too. Ask the guys in your crashpad.

If you are on reserve, you can swap reserve days if the days are "green" that you have reserve days on. Look at the reserve grid. If it has a surplus of reserves, you can drop or swap that reserve day. If you have flica alerts enabled, you can set up an alert for that day when it goes green.

Otherwise, like other people said, try to get your reserve days all grouped together, and try to start on Tuesday. Try to pick up open time on your first day if you see one that has a later start and will help you commute.

Don't worry, you'll learn quickly.