62. Somehow, he passed the interview and was accepted into the training program. In fact, as best he could determine, every person interviewed was accepted. He figured that the program had to have a high dropout rate to accept 100 percent of the interviewees. His three‐month training class started a week later.

Class was tough from day one. All trainees received two huge notebook binders, each containing about 600 pages. At the end of the first week, he promised himself that he would not be the first to drop out. Every day, the instructors presented more rules and regulations that students had to understand and memorize. All the students busily highlighted various sentences in various colors in their notebooks.

Some rules and regs seemed to him to contradict one another. He constantly raised his hand to ask questions. Several times he asked classmates, "Do you understand all this stuff?" Most of them admitted they didn't. He not only didn't understand many of the rules and regs, but also couldn't remember one from another. Despite his studying, they were all jumbled together in his mind.

On Friday of week seven, even though no one else had dropped out, he told the lead instructor, "I'm finished. There's too much information being presented too fast for me."

She said, "I understand. It's only going to get more difficult, so it's probably best that you quit now. Frankly, I had figured you would be the first to go. I'm just surprised you hung in this long." 6.6, 253