Adventures in St Andrews
Last Friday I went to my interview in St Andrews. St Andrews is a small city, well more like town, in Scotland, an hour away from Edinbugh. When I typed "St Andrews" in the destination text box, the search engine said "sorry, we cannot find a place called St Andrews" - that's how small the place is. I woke up at 4am that morning, snoozed for ten minutes, skipped breakfast, got dressed and ran down to the bus station. Took the 4.30am bus to King's Cross and arrived at King's Cross at 5am. Bought a well-needed coffee and waited an hour reading about a breakthrough kidney transplant in The Times. Finally got on the train, and spent the 6-hour journey reading about various medical things. There was such a clear difference between England and Scotland, as soon as we left the last factories and rubbish dump grounds and emerged into a beautiful landscape, I knew at once we had crossed the border. The train track in Scotland was built right along the shoreline, and the view of the sea was magnificent! There were some farm houses right by the sea, and I saw a lovely house 20m away from the sea with cows and pigs and stuff, which I've convinced my boyfriend to purchase when he gets rich!
I finally arrived at Leuchars train station, only to be greeted by a deserted train station and green meadows. There was 1 bus station, where the bus into St Andrews stopped. St Andrews is the such a beautiful place, with ancient style low buildings. They only have one main street where all the shops are, the remaining streets have shops are small cute private shops and cafes. The people there are also very small-townish, very friendly and open! When I was on the bus into town, the bus didn't annouce which station we were approaching like it does in London, and I needed to get off at South Street, but I had no effing idea which stop South Street was. So I asked the man sitting beside me, and we started talking, and I told him about my interview. At the station, he even got off to show me where I should walk to get to the university.
The middle-of-nowhere train station
Found the university and interview waiting room without getting lost, and gave the receptionist my name. I was just about to take a seat, but the atmosphere was so freaking tense, because all the interview-waiting applicants were acting as if they were facing the end of the world. I abandoned the room and found a cafe where I had a jacket potato and looked through some final stuff. Strangely, I wasn't all too nervous through all that time, which was a good thing. I'm getting good at blocking thoughts that I don't want to think about out of my mind, which meant I didn't freak out about the interview. I returned to the applicants'-awaiting-death-room and waited a few minutes, where a woman took 8 applicants, including me, into a small room where we read a newspaper article regarding a trial vaccine that helps people to quit smoking. After we read it, she lead us all into a big room where 8 different panels, 2 professionals in each panel, awaited one applicant. This is when I started to get properly nervous, although I didn't have much time to get too nervous before the interview started.
Small, cute town
South Street, where the Uni is located
Lovely outfit for a gentleman!
I answered most of the questions quite well I thought, except for one crucial question regarding the medicine course they offer at St Andrews. However, all the other applicants said they felt quite good about the interview too, so I don't know how well I actually did compared to the others. The interview was 20 minutes, but it felt like 5! I was in the middle of asking them a super smart question that I had from reading about that kidney transplant that morning when I got cut off because the time ran out! After the interview, they took us around the campus and we got to see the dissection room, which was sooo cool! There weren't any cadavers, but they had some samples of organs and stuff. I think if all the smokers saw a healthy lovely pink lung beside a smoker's yucky black-particle-stained lung, they would be so horrified that it would make them stop smoking.
After that I went back to the train station and awaited the train back to London. This is not the end of the story though, because at about 9pm, when there were about 3 hours of the train journey left, they train suddenly stopped at Newcastle. Then the driver announced that a person had been hit by a train and died on our railway track. Fucking hell. I have no clue whether it was our train, or another train that hit the person, because the driver said "a train", but sweet Jesus, poor person, such a pity. I did not expect anything like this to happen on my trip for an interview. Our train was stranded in Newcastle for more than 2 hours while the British police did all the investigations and removed the body. So eventually I arrived at 2am in London instead of the original 12am, got home at 3am, and got to bed by 4am. I was literally awake for 24 hours. Couldn't fall asleep though even though I was very tired, everything that happened that day, the train journey, the interview, the person that got hit by a train (which I hope was not ours) was just swimming around in my head. But at least I felt relieved to be home and to have the interview and trip behind me. When I arrived home, I also found something on the kitchen counter left by the Brownie God for me:
The Brownie God left me two(!) brownie pieces for my hard work ("To YiTeng, A giflt for thy bidding and hard work. Goodluck with the remaining interviews")!
Amen!
I finally arrived at Leuchars train station, only to be greeted by a deserted train station and green meadows. There was 1 bus station, where the bus into St Andrews stopped. St Andrews is the such a beautiful place, with ancient style low buildings. They only have one main street where all the shops are, the remaining streets have shops are small cute private shops and cafes. The people there are also very small-townish, very friendly and open! When I was on the bus into town, the bus didn't annouce which station we were approaching like it does in London, and I needed to get off at South Street, but I had no effing idea which stop South Street was. So I asked the man sitting beside me, and we started talking, and I told him about my interview. At the station, he even got off to show me where I should walk to get to the university.
The middle-of-nowhere train station
Found the university and interview waiting room without getting lost, and gave the receptionist my name. I was just about to take a seat, but the atmosphere was so freaking tense, because all the interview-waiting applicants were acting as if they were facing the end of the world. I abandoned the room and found a cafe where I had a jacket potato and looked through some final stuff. Strangely, I wasn't all too nervous through all that time, which was a good thing. I'm getting good at blocking thoughts that I don't want to think about out of my mind, which meant I didn't freak out about the interview. I returned to the applicants'-awaiting-death-room and waited a few minutes, where a woman took 8 applicants, including me, into a small room where we read a newspaper article regarding a trial vaccine that helps people to quit smoking. After we read it, she lead us all into a big room where 8 different panels, 2 professionals in each panel, awaited one applicant. This is when I started to get properly nervous, although I didn't have much time to get too nervous before the interview started.
Small, cute town
South Street, where the Uni is located
Lovely outfit for a gentleman!
I answered most of the questions quite well I thought, except for one crucial question regarding the medicine course they offer at St Andrews. However, all the other applicants said they felt quite good about the interview too, so I don't know how well I actually did compared to the others. The interview was 20 minutes, but it felt like 5! I was in the middle of asking them a super smart question that I had from reading about that kidney transplant that morning when I got cut off because the time ran out! After the interview, they took us around the campus and we got to see the dissection room, which was sooo cool! There weren't any cadavers, but they had some samples of organs and stuff. I think if all the smokers saw a healthy lovely pink lung beside a smoker's yucky black-particle-stained lung, they would be so horrified that it would make them stop smoking.
After that I went back to the train station and awaited the train back to London. This is not the end of the story though, because at about 9pm, when there were about 3 hours of the train journey left, they train suddenly stopped at Newcastle. Then the driver announced that a person had been hit by a train and died on our railway track. Fucking hell. I have no clue whether it was our train, or another train that hit the person, because the driver said "a train", but sweet Jesus, poor person, such a pity. I did not expect anything like this to happen on my trip for an interview. Our train was stranded in Newcastle for more than 2 hours while the British police did all the investigations and removed the body. So eventually I arrived at 2am in London instead of the original 12am, got home at 3am, and got to bed by 4am. I was literally awake for 24 hours. Couldn't fall asleep though even though I was very tired, everything that happened that day, the train journey, the interview, the person that got hit by a train (which I hope was not ours) was just swimming around in my head. But at least I felt relieved to be home and to have the interview and trip behind me. When I arrived home, I also found something on the kitchen counter left by the Brownie God for me:
The Brownie God left me two(!) brownie pieces for my hard work ("To YiTeng, A giflt for thy bidding and hard work. Goodluck with the remaining interviews")!
Amen!
Kommentarer
Postat av: Anonym
haha wooow, vem e brownieguden? :O kan du presentera mig för honom/henne? :P btw, den där metallplattan på den skotska outfitten, vad e den till för? skydd mot oväntade slag mot det känsliga området? :P
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