FML

 I'm exhausted.

Yesterday I got up at 6.45am to meet a girl to buy some second hand uni uniform from at 8am.  I went to the gym and did a killer cardio session with Katie, we walked to the gym and back and did and did a solid hour of work in the gym itself. Then, at 4pm, I started my first shift of my new job at the chemist. 

The people at the chemist seem really nice. The boss is lovely; she is a perfectionist and prides herself on her shops. I think this is a good thing generally, but it does make for a somewhat intimidating experience as a newbie. The "being new" phase of a job is rarely fun; I've got a lot to learn and I hate knowing that even my best effort isn't going to meet the required day in day out standard at this point. 

It is such a different style of work to what I was doing previously. It is frantically busy, which did make the time fly. I wasn't used to being on my feet for 6 hours straight and I will definitely need to buy some different shoes. By the end of the shift I was so overwhelmed with new information that I didn't quite know whether to cry or fall asleep on the floor.

It didn't help that for the second half of the shift I was freaking out because I hadn't had a chance to contact my parent to tell them what time I'd be finishing. No one told me what time the shift would finish and I forgot to ask. My plan was to text my parents during a quiet moment during the shift. 

One of the things about my previous job that I liked was that everyone was treated as an adult. You couldn't tell lawyers and support staff to turn their phones off and only check them during designated breaks. Working in the mail room, it was important to be contactable at all times. If we were expecting an important personal call we needed to take, we could take it so long as we were in a situation where it wasn't rude to do so. I had forgotten that in many other work places, this is not how things operate. 

I'm so lucky to get this job. It will improve my pharmacology knowledge immensely and as a part timer, I will be guaranteed 13.5 hours a week of shifts that I can actually attend. 

For the last 2 hours of my shift I was completely stressed out, worrying that my parents would be fretting that they didn't know where I was. When the shift finished I had 2 missed calls and 3 messages all from my parents. Thankfully they were not mad or too worked up. I explained what happened and there was no fuss at all.

Today was exhausting too. It started wonderfully when I missed the train to Frankston because it left 3 minutes early! Since when does a train ever go early. I was under the impression that the orientation session (it said COMPULSORY in caps in the email) was actually important, so rather than being 40 minutes late, I grabbed a taxi.

The cab rank at the station was devoid of cabs and when one did turn up, a lady tried to jump into it and the disabled woman who had been waiting at the rank cue went ballistic, they were too busy fighting over it to notice that one was turning onto the street from the opposite side to the cab rank. By the time I jumped into it I could hear them both yelling, "Hey, she took the other one".

In the taxi I realised I had no money on my card. I tried netbank but it was down due to "technical difficulties" so I had to call up the bank, set up phone banking and transfer the money.

It cost me $90 to get to uni on time to sit through a pointless 'campus welcome' which included an academic procession and a DVD of a campus tour, which they showed us before we went on an actual campus tour... Fantastic.

After the fantastic two hours of campus welcome and tour, we had 3 hours of information sessions. This entailed sitting in a lecture hall while a course coordinator read us the unit guide that we had in front of us. At other campuses people would hang around and drink, but no one wants to spent anymore time in Frankston than they have to and most have to drive   home from campus. 

I did meet a lovely girl, Ali, who has just moved to Melbourne to study at Monash 3 days ago from of all places, Adelaide!

I then walked to the station with Katie's pal Gemma, who is a second year Nursing/Paramedic student. It was 14 mins to the next train so we got slurpees at Frankston 7 eleven then sat on the train for an hour back to civilisation. I got subway for dinner on the way home, had 45minutes down time then headed to a St John Ambulance meeting.

I got my timetable

Mum and Dad were out so they couldn't supervise me driving myself to the meeting, so I worked out how to get the bus. I got off 4 stops too early. This gave me a 20minute walk that I had to walk in 15 minutes. I did CPR re-accreditation, which is 5 minutes straight of CPR on one of those weird torso mannequins. 5 minutes goes really slowly when all you have to do is chest compressions (30 per round) and breaths (2 per round).

Thankfully, the lovely Yuan, a 4th year med student, was nice enough to give me a lift home. She apologised for her somewhat car and cautious driving style. I reminded her that she was doing my a huge favour, was still on my Ls and don't have a car.

Things I learned today:

• I NEED MY LICENCE

                       That's it.

I'm starting to wonder how I'm going to survive this year.

On an unrelated note, good luck to Katie! She has her driving test tomorrow.