Hospitals

On Sunday I’ll be taking another journey into the unknown. For the next two weeks I’ll be doing some work experience at a small publishing company in Oxford, which I’m really looking forward to, but an also very nervous about. The last time I did work experience was several years ago when I was in the lower Sixth at school. I was fascinated at the time by Casualty, and was utterly determined that I was going to be a nurse. So I found myself in the children’s outpatients department of Arrow Park Hospital. It was not what I was hoping it to be.

The only consolation was working there with one of my friends. There was really very little we could do, and I don’t think the nurses there had much use or need of us there. It was a ward for children who were having their tonsils or wisdom teeth out. They came in, then went out. We made a lot of pieces of toast for them. The smell of it almost drove us mad, as of course, we couldn’t have any. And we learned how to make a bed hospital style. I promptly forgot the moment our week finished. The best part of the time was going up to the playroom of the hospital school. So I think I’ve made a more thoughtful choice this time of what to do.

The point of this I seem to have wandered away from: what’s made me most nervous is arriving in a place where I know no one at all, again. Several times in my life I’ve done this, and actually each time it’s worked out well. Thinking back to the end of September, it struck me hard as I was driving down the M5 that I would arrive in Falmouth in a few hours time, and no one would know me. Who would I meet? Would anyone help me unpack the mountain of stuff I’d managed to cram into the back of my fiesta?

They did. I arrived at where I was staying, and found that people were kind, and I was soon feeling that I could get to know people. Josh, who was staying temporarily in the house took me out for a drink to the Waterman’s bar, and we watched the sun set over the harbour. I was reassured that I’d made the right move.