Learning to Speak "McMurdo"

Like the military, McMurdo Station is obsessed with acronyms and nick-names. When I first arrived, I thought people were speaking a foreign language.

“Hey FNGi (F***ing New Girl). Get your ECW checked in. Then go past DJ and head to 155 for an OST. After that check your house-mouse schedule in 211, and then head up to ATO to get your mid-rats card.”

Me “WTF?”

And it only got worse….

I spent my first two weeks memorizing hundreds of aviation acronyms for my job. I was lost. I also spent hours going through safety lectures and survival trainings. I was cold. How do these yahoos expect me to ingest all this information so quickly? I was tired.

But like any foreign language, if you fully immerse yourself, you start to pick up bits and pieces. And soon you are spitting out the new language yourself.  That is the evolution of language fluency.

A typical conversation at work:

“The AOPB does not reflect a new mission in PL, so we need to change the AZM flight to ZSP”

Me “Do I need to create a new PAX manifest and combine it with the Cargo FSM and send out a new DEP?”

In less than 4 weeks, I became fluent in “McMurdo.”