Discombobulated

All night I had dreams about somehow missing my interview and so when I woke up in the morning I was adament there would be no way I was going to miss that interview! I had my shower and a bowl of noodles before leaving with my dad in the car. We didn't get far though as the traffic was horrendous! The heavy rain had made things worse. My dad decided to try changing to the faster lane which would take us to Te Atatu Peninsula and see if we could get on to the motorway faster that way. Unfortunately it was just as long!

Time was fast running out and we were crawling at no more than 5km/hr along the motorway. My interview was at 9am and we were still around Pt Chevalier at 8.45am! I was starting to freak out, wondering if I wasn't meant to make this interview. That's when I decided to be proactive and ring up all the phone numbers I could find on the letter I received. I first contacted the Undergraduate Amissions lady, but only got an answering machine! I tried another phone number but got the same response! Without knowing who to ring next I decided to ring general admissions and asked to be referred on to someone who knew about pharmacy interviews. Finally someone from pharmacy was on the line and I told them of my situation, that I had been stuck in traffic for nearly over an hour and hadn't gotten beyond Pt Chevalier, and was looking likely to miss my interview at 9am. I asked if anything could be done about it, and so she put me on hold, and when she got back, her first words were

"OK you can relax now! We've rescheduled your interview for 11.30am."

Thank goodness thank goodness thank goodness! Even though those three phone calls had cost me a litle over $5... It only took us about ten minutes to get to the medical school and my dad told me to go find out what was going on and then text him (he was using Hamish's cell phone) and let him know if I wanted him to wait or stay. Once I got out of the car I started wandering around the campus with my mum's purple floral umbrella. I went to the cafeteria to text Aonghas to let him know what had happened and he told me to get the house key off my dad. I texted my dad, who later replied telling me to wait for him opposite the bus stop!

Now one thing you have to know is my dad does not know how to text! I went to the bus stop to wait for him for a while but he never showed up, so I waited at the nearby entrance to the Auckland Domain and texted my dad to let him know I was there. I waited for at least ten minutes before walking back to the bus stop when I saw him drive into the entrance! I walked quickly back up there and down the road past the entrance and eventually found the parked car, but my dad was gone! My dad texted me to ask where I was, and I said I was standing beside where the car was parked. I thought I better wait at the car just in case he decided to come back.

Ten minutes went by and nothing! I texted him to ask where he was and he said he was at the main entrance! So I walked all the way back to the main entrance of the domain but he was nowhere to be seen. I thought that maybe he might've meant the entrance to the medical school, so I crossed the road, went inside and there was the receptionist trying to show my dad how to text!

My dad left soon after that and I just hung around for another couple hours going over what I was going to say, until it was 11am. I went to the building where the interviews were being held and was greeted by a few current pharmacy students who ticked my name off. I talked to a few of them, trying to get as much out of them as possible! One of them told me that 600 were being interviewed, which got me feeling a little hopeless! Another girl, Mimi, who just completed first year and knows Lunshen (apparently because there's only 100 of them they're like family! That's so cool!) told me there was fewer though so that gave me a little more hope! About half an hour later (traffic was bad for not only me!!), it was finally my turn for an interview.

I was led to a door and I waited outside talking to the pharmacy student waiting with me for a while. The interviewers would open the door when they were ready. The trouble is, they never opened the door! After about ten minutes, some women came down the aisle asking if there was a Calum Anderson who was delayed by traffic earlier in the morning. It turns out the pharmacy students had taken me to the wrong interviewing room!

The interviewers were two women who were really nice, possibly too nice to be able to read them well! They started off asking me about my music teaching job before asking me about how I found health science. I replied with

"It was...interesting..."

I talked about how I chose it because of the attraction of learning about the structure of the health system and public health, and then they asked me to explain more about it to them.They also asked me what I would spend money on if I was the Minister of Health. Fortunately the interviewer agreed with my answer!

They then moved on to my past responsibilities such as being Head Boy and a student trustee on the BOT, and I told them about the sort of things I did for the school. They then questioned me on what other hobbies I had and I told them news and current affairs. They asked me what health-related news had been going on recently, and I mentioned the fiasco going on down in Wellington where the CEO resigned, but when they asked me what I would do to rectify the situation, I sorta hesitated and told them that to this point I had only briefly read about that situation and that in all honesty I didn't know enough to be able to make a reasonable assessment of the situation. That sounds much like a cop-out!

They asked me where I could see myself in pharmacy and I said as a hospital or community pharmacist, or even possibly owning my own pharmacy one day as owning a business did sound appealing after having taken the economics general education paper (to which one of the interviewers jokingly said everyone had taken!)

We finished off talking about what else I had applied for and I told them that I hadn't applied for anything else, stressing that pharmacy was number one priority for me! That's where it all ended.

I came out thinking it went all right, until as I was walking from Grafton back to the city all these WHAT IF'S and THAT DIDN'T SOUND TOO GOOD'S were filling my head! I described people who hung around and smoked in dark and dingy places at school as 'bad people' even though I said I cared for people not too long before (a better word such as miscreant just didn't come into my mind soon enough!). I'm not too sure if my handshake was firm enough, or if I sounded serious enough, or if I presented myself well enough ARGHHH!!

The perfect cure - go to Munchie Mart, buy a bag of chips and binge eat! :D

We'll be informed of the result by January so I guess I should just forget about it till then and enjoy the holidays!

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Speaking of holidays, great to see the decorations up around the city!