Post by Taryn Adler on Jun 18, 2017 9:43:58 GMT -8
Taryn Johanna Adler
<Played by Sparling>
Full Name>> Taryn Johanna Adler
Nicknames>> Jo (to her family)
Date of Birth>> 12/29/1984
Staff or Student>> Staff Campus Police Officer
House>> Brown Ribbon Apartments
Gender>> Female
Sexuality>> Heteroflexible
Face Claim>> Shelley Hennig
Personality>> Stable, responsible and hardworking are words often used to describe Taryn when somebody asks, but it would be a mistake to call her staid. She's possessed of a practical, analytical intelligence and desire to seek out new knowledge and techniques to add to her mental toolbox, as well as a sardonic deadpan wit. Although she generally cares for and desires to help people she finds it difficult to express this in words, preferring to do so via actions, untangling troubles or smoothing the way forward.
She's also ambitious, aspiring to higher things. Up is the direction she wants to, much as it's been curtailed of late, and any task she sets to she pursues with patient, methodical tenacity and high standards that make her a demanding taskmaster and occasionally the Mayor of Nofunnington, but a producer of excellent results.
With her cool-headed response to situations and general desire to care for people she can be someone's emotional port in a storm, but those trying to connect with her emotions can find her frustratingly reticent to shed her role as the Responsible One or admit to vulnerability. She'll take care of you, not the other way around.
Likes>> Structure and order, most animals, nature, rhythmic music, German food, community-minded people
Dislikes>> Disorganization, inconsistency, silverfish, dill, entitled use of social systems without giving back
Fears>> Personal failure, inability to effect change, irrelevance, the possibility she might never be satisfied with her life, giant squid
Hopes>> To do something of lasting significance
To learn better work-life balance
Secrets>> She has no idea what she's doing with her life at this point. Although she knows she has the ability to reach higher ranks, she fears her own limits will result in another failure.
Appearance>> Tall for a woman at 5'10", Taryn is without much in the way of curves by both design and practice, keeping to the fitness standards required of an officer. She keeps her hair cropped short or pulled tightly back and makes a point of removing the grey ones that have made a premature appearance. Her voice is a rich alto with a hint of smoke when she isn't flattening its expression into a deadpan drawl. She prefers structured clothing with clean lines and few accessories, owning multiple copies of pieces that work with her dark coloring, but most of Blue Ridge Riding Academy will see her on duty in a well-kept uniform.
Markings>> Pierced ears, appendectomy scar and a few others.
Medical History>> Appendectomy at age 10, broken collarbone at 16. Repetitive stress injury in her wrists from too much typing and writing; treated, but sensitivity to re-emergence. Various strains, sprains and scrapes from the line of duty.
Full History>> Like many children, Taryn entertained the notion of being a police officer. Unlike most of those children, she didn't outgrow it. She pursued it instead, with the purposeful determination that would come to characterize her adult personality, and ultimately be her undoing.
She often seemed to shaping up as something else - a dancer, maybe, with her activity levels and attraction to music, or a science educator, with her unusually clear communication and an interest in nature bolstered by involvement in scouting. She went to college on a track scholarship and majored in psychology, but by the time graduation rolled around, she'd completed the law enforcement exam and entered the police academy not long after.
As an officer, her strong work ethic, resourceful problem-solving and thorough, analytical approach to policing earned her accolades, and after three years promotion to detective. Taryn managed the stresses of the job - long hours, crime scenes, distraught family members and witnesses - well, and was considered well-suited for her position.
But you can't fight city hall - or its budget cuts.
Taryn wasn't caught in the round of layoffs that followed the department's diminished resources, but her caseload increased, and increased again. Already demanding, her work whittled away at her, bit by bit. Used to weathering periods of discomfort and persisting until the job was done, Taryn didn't notice at first. The force needed her, the community needed her - and with the department short-staffed and her social life having dwindled to nothing due to time and stress, there were vanishingly few who would coach her to look to her own needs, or say "Enough."
Eventually her body did. Not by the severe headaches, unexplained stabbing chest pains, and restless, unrefeshing sleep she'd been ignoring all along, but the realization, waking up to a call a few hours past midnight, that if she went on like this, something of hers would be permanently broken. Perhaps her health, her love of police-work, or her ability to care about others. Perhaps all three.
That scared her enough to look at herself honestly, and realize how little of her was left.
Not knowing what she'd do next was terrifying, but there were things she was unwilling to lose. She retired at 30, a month shy of eight years on the force, and went home to what felt like a future in name only and a crushing sense of personal failure.
Over some months, she recovered. Enough to help her parents, enough to take up volunteering, enough to grow restless and dissatisfied with where she was and consider the idea of looking at a police department again - Blue Ridge, this time. But not as a detective. That desire, it seemed, had become a casualty.
She went in as a plain patrol officer, learning the dynamics of her new department and community. As she adjusted, ambition to do more started to whisper in her ear again. Fearing another failure, she flinched from the idea of pursuing detective, or the responsibility and stresses of higher ranks. She put in for School Resource Officer training, and upon completion, was assigned to Blue Ridge Riding Academy.
She isn't sure if she's going to stay more than a year, but for now it's a direction.
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