Week 33 - Interviewing & Not-Clinicing

Thursday #34 – for the first Thursday in quite a while I kicked off the day in my own bed.  After lots of snoozing and a text from M-Dizzle (who was downstairs in the same house at the time) I finally got myself out of bed and briefly got my exercise on.  With that out of the way I hit the shower before getting ready for clinic later in the afternoon.

M-Dizzle and I had a joint interview at uni that morning with The Slightly-Less-Evil-Corporate-Giant-In-The-Optometry-World.  I was ready for clinic and planned to take my laptop and a bunch of things to uni to get done between interview and clinic; M-Dizzle was dressed for a fancy pants interview.  Ready to leave we looked at other, exchanged “are you wearing that?!”s and I quickly ran upstairs to change out of my clinic shirt after being convinced we could come home between commitments.

The interview did not go amazingly by anyone’s standards.  The two chicks interviewing us didn’t seem overly excited about us and we were not overly excited about working for them.  With only one job in Sydney on offer (and calling Penrith Sydney is being rather generous, just don't tell The Tradie I said that) neither of us we’re jumping out of our skin at the opportunity.  It was a somewhat depressing start to the day – we weren’t expecting to come out of the morning with job offers but we also weren’t expecting to hear there were no jobs in Sydney.  Unemployment is looking better everyday.

After forging a quick signature for ethics approval of a research project, we headed home to be productive and get lots of case reports done before our afternoon of clinic.  Instead, I re-formatted my CV to look less like M-Dizzle’s (and a lot more like The Hot One’s), filled in a lengthy Graduate Aspirational Analysis for The Most-Evil-Corporate-Giant-In-The-Optometry-World, and wondered why they wanted to know my relationship status.  Chatting to DTM at the time I mentioned this and was told to put down single.  His other suggestion of writing “it’s complicated” probably wouldn’t go down very well with prospective employers.  Apparently his logic was that being single would score me points in the job hiring world but it certainly did not score him any points in my world!

After feeling like a massive sell-out and arranging an interview for next week, I made some lunch (bagel and eggs Barbados breakfast style) and once again got dressed for clinic.  M-Dizzle was entranced in an episode of Glee (I was less interested after The BH&G Fan had a dream that the cast of Glee had murdered me) and completely lost track of time, telling me to leave without her as there was no sense in us both being late to clinic.  She had a point.  Or so we thought.

I got myself to clinic and was ready to go by 1pm when the first lot of patients are scheduled to arrive.  I watched as other people were given patients ahead of me, and wondered why I had bothered rushing in.  Eventually we gave up on the 1.00 round and headed back to our rooms to wait it out for the next lot of patients to arrive at 2.30.  The Drawing Receptionist came and handed us patient files at 2.15 and as The Italian and I read over them, The Not Much Older Than Me Supervisor came and took them off us.  She reallocated them to other students and we continued to wait for it to be our turn to have patients. We waited and waited and eventually gave up and left to go have coffee with The Greek Jesus.

We hung around for our tute and then M-Dizzle and I headed home, discussing the bizarre effect her dyed red locks had had on her, mentally and emotionally.  I cooked up some Latina Fresh with pesto for dinner and thought of both Legs 11 and The Italian in the process.  After dinner it was time to catch up on some downloads, watch some TV, and once again set-up DTM’s extra ipad so that I can play draw something on a reasonable sized screen.  With that all out of the way, I somehow wasted hours looking online at ecards and damnyouautocorrect...it's amazing how much time I can devote to these activities when I have uni work I should be doing.

A particularly frustrating Thursday as it was my 3^rd day in a row of turning up to clinic and not seeing any patients.  It’s hard to maintain my newfound amazingness in clinic when I don’t actually do any clinic.  With one Thursday left for semester 1, I’m hoping it’s an improvement but not holding my breath.

Week 32 - Bussing & A-ing

Thursday #33 – another Thursday and yet another mattress on the floor.  With soccer training on Wednesday nights I find myself rotating through various rooms when I stay at The BH&G Fan’s house; this week it was the study.  I had big plans for a productive morning of uni work, finally doing my part of the lit review (which had not been revisited since I attempted a draft when I first arrived, jetlagged, in New York), and maybe some case reports before heading back home and into clinic in the arvo.  None of that happened and I eventually hopped on a bus (with my car once again in for repairs) to the city to head back to The ‘Bra.

Despite having moved south to avoid hours spent on the bus every day, as I sat on the bus home this Thursday, I couldn’t help thinking I actually kinda missed it.  Sure I would whinge when I wanted to get home quickly after uni, but there’s something about that half-asleep bus journey in the morning that was somewhat relaxing.  Plus without daily bus trips, where am I going to find inspiring new hairdos like the one I saw boarding the bus in Kensington?  And don’t even get me started on where I’m going to find the time to watch my downloaded TV shows…

When I finally got to clinic I wasn’t overly excited about the afternoon I had ahead of me.  After last Thursday’s clinic meltdown, and a similarly horrible experience on Monday, I was dreading any form of clinic and the inevitable feedback which followed it.  Lucky for me I had My Favourite Supervisor and was suddenly disappointed that I had only been given 1 patient and not my usual 2.  My patient and I bonded over a shared association with COFA – him as a current student and me as a past student.  Things went fairly smoothly and when it came time for feedback I remained composed and tried not to act too surprised when My Favourite Supervisor gave me my first ever clinic A.  I’ve thrown around a few titles for the inspirational self-help book I plan to write about my experience and so far the fav seems to be From Tears to “Exceptional” in One Week.

After a year and a half of “satisfactory” clinicing, I was on a real high when I headed home that night.   I shared my excitement with DTM and realised that an A in clinic suddenly seems less exciting when the response you get is something about getting on a bus to Guatemala.  In one sentence he managed to take away from my morning bus trip and my clinic grade!

Not the most riveting Thursday to read about but exciting for me to be back in the game clinically.

Week 31 - Crushing Dreams & Tearing Up

Thursday #32 - this Thursday kicked off with some early morning messages from DTM somewhere in Central America.  I was on The Scientist’s bedroom floor and conscious that any phone noises may wake her up, so tried to keep the conversation brief.  He sent a map of his current exotic location and I sent one back…with a completely random location that left me wondering what drugs my phone’s GPS was on.  It was early in the morning but I was fairly confident I had not somehow gone to sleep in Forestville and woken up in Mosman.  After yet another interrupted sleep, it wasn’t long before my alarm was going off and I was getting up to head off to uni.

Getting the bus into the city from DTM’s hood reminded me of Friday mornings where he would completely ignore me in favour of his ipad/ipod/iphone and end up getting to work on time while I was without fail late to uni.  Not surprisingly, without free movies the night before and DTM on board pretending not to know me, I made it to uni right on time.

First up was colour vision, which is a bit of a personal fav when it comes to clinic.  I imagine colour vision will lose some of its appeal once I start breaking the news to people that they’re not gonna get the job they’re going for; but so far my patients have all taken the bad news quite well.  The father of our 14 year old army cadet patient seemed disappointed for his son when we told him a career in the defence force was probably out of the question; but his mother could not have been happier to hear that news!

After a morning of shattering people’s dreams it was off to the shops to buy The Marge a present for Marge’s Day.  Shopping done and a quick El Maco stop for lunch and I was heading home to change my shoes ahead of the afternoon’s clinic.  Back to uni for a riveting tutorial with The Plural Confuser, M-Dizzle won herself 10 cents in a bet with The Italian that we would not learn anything in that hour.  Why The Italian would bet against that I have no idea.  At 5pm I was farewelling my usual clinic team as they headed home and I stayed on to make up the contact lens clinic I had missed on Thursday #26.  Had I known I would be returning 6 weeks later to make it up, I’m not so sure that day in bed would’ve looked so appealing.

Contact lens clinic did not go well.  I was reunited with The Seems-Nice-But-Is-She-Really Supervisor, who I struggle to take seriously at the best of times due to a ridiculous voice that sounds like I should be paying $5 a minute to listen to.  The patient and the consultation were fairly straight forward, but the wrong question at the wrong time saw me having an emotional breakdown in clinic.  If only this was the first time this had happened.  The Seems-Nice-But-Is-She-Really Supervisor did her best to console me/calm me down; but her probing questions about my dislike of what I have spent the past 5 years studying, surprisingly were not helping the situation.  Eventually she left me alone with my tissues and water to try and compose myself and make a sneaky exit from clinic without anyone noticing I had just lost the plot.  I’m not sure anyone was fooled but they were polite enough not to mention it.

It’s safe to say this Thursday was not my best day in a week that started with supervisors questioning where my words had gone and ended with them questioning where my brain had gone.  I’ve said similar things before, but I’m pretty confident that next week can only go up from here.

Week 30 - Freezing & Waffling

Thursday #31 – another early start in Melbourne with The Italian once again cooking up a breakfast feast while I showered.  Getting out of bed proved particularly difficult, as my phone told me it was 5 degrees with a “realfeel” of 0…way too cold for someone whose pyjamas are shorts and a t-shirt and who somehow forgot to pack a coat.  Vaguely warm after a hot shower and full of eggs, bacon and spinach (which had become about as much of a staple in our diet as pesto) we headed off for our penultimate day at The Australian College of Optometry.

After a couple of patients in the morning it was time to head up to the staff room to eat the lunch The Italian had packed for me.  Left over honey soy chicken noodles (which I’m pretty sure would’ve contained spinach), an apple and a crunchy nut chocolate bar later I was feeling pretty satisfied and certain that I was going to miss having my own personal chef. 

We headed back downstairs for our afternoon patients and met our new Curly Haired Enthusiastic Supervisor.  P-Nix waltzed past looking very official and serious, stopping to chat to my CHE Supervisor as we were mid discussion about how to handle my patient.  CHE Supervisor let him interrupt and didn’t seem to know whether or not to take him seriously when he told her “you’re gonna have to be extra harsh with this one”.  The Italian and I had met P-Nix the previous Friday when he supervised our contact lens clinic; and had bonded after discussing our shared bed, home-cooked meals, microwave struggles and perfect harmony.  He’d stop us for random chats and tapped me on the shoulder once as I stood waiting in the corridor, ducking around to the other side so I would be left wondering who had done it – it was safe to say we were totally his favourite students.  I had laughed at P-Nix’s absurd comment and hoped that CHE Supervisor had a sense of humour (I remain unsure) and was not planning on being extra harsh.

Patients done and dusted we headed home, excited about our dinner plans which had been lined up for most of the week.  The Italian was to have a night off cooking as we downed a cup-a-soup before heading off to Max Brenner for dinner.  We each ordered 2 waffles and didn’t feel that this was at all overdoing it, until The Not-So-Bald Man brought around one set of waffles with 2 sets of cutlery.  He seemed to feel a little silly when he brought around the next plate but mostly we just felt like fatty boombahs for each eating what was assumed to be for 2 people.

We headed home to watch TV and I spent most of the night hoping The Bass Player wouldn’t phone.  I’d agreed to be his wingman (as I had clearly impressed him with my efforts on NYE) as we both found ourselves in Melbourne this week and it seemed only logical we would be drinking buddies and find him a girl.  I was up for a drink (I always am) and definitely up for helping The Bass Player land a lady but I was not up for going outside in the freezing cold.  Luckily for both of us, The Bass Player was having a particularly good game of poker and didn’t finish up until 1am when he decided it would be too late to phone.

It’s not every Thursday you get to have waffles for dinner so I am willing to overlook the chilly temperatures (which allegedly reached a max of 13) this week.  It would’ve been nice to get some wingmanning in but it wasn’t to be.  Back to Sydney for next Thursday and the foreseeable future as I am officially broke.