Overcoming Fears

So this week I realised that I’m slowly overcoming my fear of talking to other people. It’s a requirement of our course that we attend a dispensing class, and practise counselling lecturers and pharmacists from the community as if they were patients. 

They grade us based on our communication skills and the accuracy of the information given. Well this week I got full marks on my communication skills. It was completely unexpected, and I half expected them to grade me poorly because I stumbled on my words when I first walked in. Apparently though, they said that I handled it really well and I made them feel at ease straight away. I never pictured myself doing a social course a few years ago, let alone getting good grades for the social aspects!

Teacher’s Pet

I thought that by the time you got to university, it stopped being “cool” to not want to learn and everyone just shut up and studied. Apparently some people don’t mentally mature, even at the age of 19+. Basically we were set a paper last year, which was marked very harshly and the average was quite low. I spent a long time slaving over my paper, making sure that everything was perfect, since it was worth quite a large percentage of our grade for first year. When the grades were released at the start of this year, no one wanted to discuss them.

People started asking me what I got, because I started my paper as soon as it was announced. It was only when I spoke to so many people that I realised that I had scored the highest in the year. Apparently, that warranted me the title of teacher’s pet, but everyone who asked me what I got. The lecturer is a harsh marker, but only if you don’t follow his advice. He gave us guidelines of how to write the essay, and some people just ignored that. Now apparently that makes me a teacher’s pet, because apparently their essays were perfect. In future, I definitely won’t be telling people what grade I got – especially if it was a good grade.

Difficult Topics

We had a lecture today speaking about depression and suicidal thoughts. Our lecturer asked us what we thought about the condition, and I have to admit it was difficult. Hearing my classmates talking about a topic so personal to me, and me having to stay emotionless about it all. I didn’t volunteer an answer, mainly because I couldn’t think of anything to say. There’s no real way to describe it, because saying “prolonged period of sadness” doesn’t even begin to do it justice. 

It was interesting to hear how other people perceive depression. I’ve been trying to stay positive lately, even though that can be difficult with so much stress. I don’t want to spend this year feeling sorry for myself though.