AFTERNOON
Guess what: Winter Clerkship! Yay!
There are only two firms in Adelaide that offer to second and third year students, and I will be working at one of them for three weeks in July. I'm pretty happy.
The one that I'll be with (let's call it Firm T) actually seems like the better firm, in my possibly biased opinion (I didn't even get to the first stage of assessment in the other one *cough*). Well, Firm T had a much more rigourous selection process - before we even saw the face of anyone in the company we had to answer all these questions about our communication style, personal interests, motivation, experience in non-law related fields, etc etc. One of their many application questions was something like, 'what, in your view, sets firm X apart from the others' and I wrote about how their thorough pre-selection questionaire showed what an awesome and detailed job they must do with everything, hahah.
There was then an 'assessment centre' thing which I was nervous about at first, because we were told it would be based around 'business scenario'. Aargh. Turns out the business scenario was not financial (which I feared) but administrative tasks. We had to work out as a group which hypothetical tasks to complete in which order if we were Person Y at a new company, and the action we would take for each one. It was stuff like: call Monica to reassure her of this, email Henry to plan for a presentation, prepare documents for Sally by the end of the day, etc. Plus do an individual writing task picking apart a bad contract.
I got through to the next stage which was a proper interview last Tuesday (with HR and a senior associate) and today I found out that I was one of the four people chosen for the job! I had a smile on my face that I couldn't shake for a while after that.
MORNING
I got to feel like a minda (or, let's say, tourist) this morning when I caught a train to the other side of town. I'm a bus girl, and had actually never been on a train in my own city until this morning. Had I lived in train-serviced suburb I may have been familiar before now with the station's walk-through ticket machines. You know, where you stick your ticket in, then the bars unlock, so you move through and grab your ticket where it pops out the other side? Yep, except apparently here the ticket doesn't do that travel-through-the-machine thing, it just pops in and out the same side. And then falls onto the ground. While you are already through and the gate has re-locked. So then you have to detour back around through the "family" bar-free booth to get your ticket off the ground, because hey, that's a multitrip.
Also: less-than-impressed by the train driver who sporadically mumbled the station we were stopping at. I situated myself near the station map so as to count the stops in between his announcements.
I was visiting a primary school with a deaf education unit, to research their perspective and compare them with another primary school. All went okay at first. I admit that when I asked his role and he mentioned he was an assistant principal, my initial feeling was woah! Big shot! Since when am I the kind of person to interview assistant principals and call them by their first name?
Unlike my interview with the first primary school, this man gave much more of a "linguistics lecturer" than "primary school teacher" vibe, going on about systemic functional grammar and metalanguage and so forth. We were almost done when something went astray. He asked me about the other primary school and I responded with probably more information than I should have (to do with an implied criticism of his centre) and I knew right after I said it that I shouldn't have. He seemed uncomfortable and annoyed, though whether at me or them I'm not sure, and wrapped it up curtly after that. Gah. From a confidentiality perspective it was a bad move, and probably tactless too.
Anyway, I sent him an email of apology that I began compose straight away on my (bus) ride back to town, and he responded kindly. All is all well, I hope. Eek.
LUNCH
I just want to mention the turning point between the bad-vibe morning and the good-news afternoon. I popped into the hostel to heat up some lunch, and had a nice chat with W and B. My visit also coincided with H's. H is a Chinese nurse who was a former cleaner/long term guest. W and I had put aside some mail for her recently, and she was excited to dicover that. H has, and I say this with affection, the most stereotypically squinty Chinese manner. She's around 40 years old and often wears a broad-brimmed hat with a drawstring underneath. When W pulled out a bundle of letters, she just about wet herself with excitement. "Ohhh, sank you W-! Sank you, sank you, sank you so mach!" She bobbled her head with each exclamation. "Ohh! Ohh!"
W started telling her about his grandson, who is only a toddler but big and tall for his age. H was loving it. "Ohh! I sink he is strong boy! He grow up vey big! Ohh!"
Overcome with excitement at seeing us again and retrieving her letters, H clutched my arm. "Wait here!" She ordered, and came back a few minutes later with a giftbag of chocolates for each of us. "You not here when I left! Only A- here! I no see you when I left!" Brightened my morning, H did.
