Joing the Army

As you can probably tell from the title of this entry, I'm in the process of enlisting in the army.

Actually, you probably didn't. The title implies that I have already enlisted. But I haven't. I've only made it past the first stage.

And what a stress that was!

Seriously!

I don't get stressed all that easily. I usually rock up to these kind of things all cool and collected. I don't even get concerned if there's some kind of nasty test involved. I breeze through it, and am like "whatever."

Not even the life/career forming year 12 exams fazed me ... except for the Indonesian bit.

But yesterday was different.

I was doing some serious freaking out about the tests. Even though I knew I could easily pass, I was still worrying. I've never had butterflies before an exam (except for the Indonesian oral exam, but that's understandable; I had to talk and get questioned in a foreign langauage for 20 minutes).

Butterflies before an exam are distracting. I don't know how people do it.

I must really want in the army more than I thought.

I also can't imagine that almost as soon as I signed in at the reception I was called into the nurses office. That was not something I was expecting. And it certainly didn't help my stress levels; my nervousness sky rocketed at that point.

But it was a none event. Just a colour perception test.

The maths test didn't help much either.

Maths isn't my friend.

Although at the beginning of the test, I thought that I might be able to bluff my way through it. But then my old enemy, triganometry, was introduced and my hopes were smashed. I have never been able to get my head around triganometry, and it's been five years since I even tried.

I had no hope of getting any answers correct.

I just wanted to run screaming from the testing room. It took all my self control not to do that. I was determined to finish that hellish test. Even if I was going to get everything wrong.

And finish it I did.

And the best thing is that I didn't have to wait long to find out how dismally I did.

Just a 20 minute wait.

And then a chat with my career counselor about my job preference and my test results. With above average results, I have a lot of possible job choices within the defence force, which includes my orginal prefence.

So, naturally, I'm very happy with that.

And now I just have a couple of things to do before I can go on through to the next stage of joing the army.

I'm sure that will be just as nerve racking as yesterday was.