YAY!!!

I PASSED MY DRIVING TEST!!!

 

Dad and I got and chuffed on down to the Vicroads centre at Carlton. Carlton is not an area I'm familiar with as a driver, which was why I had selected the 8am time slot. The area is quite different to the area around where I live due to it's inner city location, shopping and dining strip and designated tram zones. It wasn't ideal and it probably wasn't the wisest choice to book somewhere I hadn't driven before but I wanted a test sooner rather than later. Until, of course, "sooner" came upon me sooner than I thought it would and I wished I'd given myself a little more time and booked somewhere more familiar...

My test appointment was for 8am, we got there at 7.50am and it wasn't even open yet. There were three other cars parked in the designated "licence test" yellow parking bays. 

A boy, who I would guess was about 18 or 19, was speaking in Korean (?) to his Dad/ driving instructor. The instructor/ Dad seemed incredibly nervous and was jogging up and down the stairs and jumping until the office opened. There was a young lady who looked in her mid twenties of Asian appearance as well as an African couple who had brought along a translator. 

I wasn't feeling nervous driving to Carlton but once my assessor called me up to start the paperwork the nerves kicked in big time. After we finished with the formalities I was freaking out enough to think that going to the bathroom before my test was a good idea.

After my little bathroom break, I headed out to the car park and did my controls check. I was asked to turn the lights, indicators and hazard lights on and off in all sorts of combinations. The only hairy moment there was that I had a complete mental blank as to where the demisters were (how embarrassing). Thankfully that is not a fail-able offence and I think he could probably see that it was just nerves.

The drive itself was pretty straight forward. Apparently there are two stages of the test. Stage one ends with your reverse parallel park. My reverse parallel park was fine. I aimed to be a little further out from the curb than what you'd probably consider perfect in order to avoid accidentally bumping it, which proved a solid strategy. 

The time seemed to go very quickly. For most of the test I just needed to remember to stop for a conservative 3 seconds at stop signs and to give way to the right at roundabouts. I had to change lanes very frequently, but there were barely any cars around, so it wasn't a problem. I wasn't able to follow one instruction to turn right into a side street because there was no safe opportunity to change lanes. 

At two different points rogue pedestrians walked right in front of me. One was at the traffic lights, my stream of traffic had the green but this young man decided to walk across the pedestrian crossing anyway and quite slowly, too. The other lot were a young couple who were too besotted with each other to look for cars before they crossed the street. 

I had one moment where I was about 95% sure that I had right of way to turn. After I had made the turn I started to question my decision and started panicking that I might have just failed.

By the time I could see we were headed back to the Vicroads office I realised my mouth was really dry. I drove back into Vicroads and after I had parked, was asked to take a seat whilst he tallied my results. I was very concerned when I entered the car park that I there were no other cars in the test bays. Inside the office, Dad was the only person waiting. I thought that I must have made a critical error and that my test had been cut short.

I could hardly believe it when my assessor called me up to the desk and congratulated me. Whilst I didn't think I'd made any mistakes, I was convinced that I must have done something wrong without realising it. He gave me reasonably minimal feedback, telling me that I needed to use my mirrors more. 

(I then proceeded to do a happy dance in the Vicroads office). 

After I paid and signed all the bits of paper that needed attending to, Dad took me out for a celebratory breakfast on Lygon Street. Dad told me over breakfast that the Korean sounding boy's test had lasted little more than 15 minutes and was given a lot of very stern feedback from an obviously unimpressed assessor, who failed him. 

I still can't quite believe I actually passed. I had begun preparing myself mentally about a week ago to fail this attempt. I still have a bit of confidence building to do, though. On one hand, I can't wait to be able to drive to Frankston some of the time, on the other hand I am also a little terrified at the prospect of driving all by myself!

The other funny thing is that Katie started learning to drive before me, initially learned a whole lot faster and has had her licence for just over 3 weeks. Now that I have passed my test, over 21 I get to jump straight to green Ps (or P2). In Victoria if you are under 21 when you get your licence you start on red Ps for a year and then move onto green for 3 years.  If you're over 21 you jump straight to 3 years of green.The major difference is that on red Ps you can only carry one passenger (non-relative) aged 18-24 in the car with you at any time. This restriction does not apply for green.

In other words, I've been behind Katie all this time and now I have leap-frogged ahead! Very ironic.

I tried to imagine that the test was like doing balance beam at the Olympics. You've already got most of the hard work out of the way (2 out of 4 apparatus already complete). Beam is a game of balance in more than one sense. You have to achieve the perfect equilibrium of trusting your training (as to not over think) and concentrating enough on the details to perform to your highest potential. After you've got through beam unscathed, floor is next. Whilst floor isn't easy and a mistake on floor could ruin your competition, it much harder to fall off and you get the joy of performing your routine to the crowd.

How I see it is that vault and bars are the driving practice that you already have behind you, beam is the driving test and floor is being able to drive once you have your licence. Once you have your licence, you still need to avoid critical errors but it's a bit easier too.