Technically I should start this blog with my train journey down to the ymca but that would just be long and boring! It’s safe to say I got here fine, the journey wasn’t bad and nothing too eventful happened. The one thing I would recommend is that you get an oyster card and top it up with about £20 straight away as it will work for your travel to and from the academy and it’s a god-send to not have to worry about it on the first day trust me!
Your very first day is one hell of an early start; you have to be up at 5am to be downstairs in full make-up and a business dress at 6:20 am in order to meet the other students for the coach ride to the medical exam. The medical itself seems quite unusual at first as it is held at the doctors own house in a seperate complex, however this is his private practice and so not affiliated with the NHS at all. There is a lot of waiting around so take the opportunity to get to know your new colleagues a little bit better. After your initial medical is complete (bloods, sight, reactions etc…) you go to the hospital in groups to get x rays, though again this is private practice and not like your typical hospital in any way. The process involved with the x ray is very quick and you will be in and out in no time.
Now you will be on your way to the academy, again with transport provided to see to all the usual admin involved with a new job, such as procedure and policy, uniform, sorting any missing paperwork and understanding your pay system. You will also be informed that you have to give a short presentation on the following morning that will be your grading and will help decide what type of ship you will be placed upon for your contract. Presentation probably isn’t the right word for it as it will really only be between 30 seconds and 2 minutes long…any shorter you won’t have covered enough, any longer and you will be rambling. We had some really good presentations given today and also some not very good ones, but apparently they were all better than the previous weeks lot as we were told the director who comes to listen to them had stopped them because he was bored!
In addition to preparing your speech for the grading you also have to read about 60 pages worth of policy and procedure document on the first night so you really will need to get organised and start studying early on in the evening or you will have a very late night!
The 6am wake up the next morning is a veritable lie-in after the previous morning but still no less of a rush as everyone in your room rushes to get ready in the same 2ft squared space. The first port of call upon arrival at the academy is the conference room that you will have been in the previous day where you will be registered with all of the other trainees before being told your room for the weeks training. The first day mainly consists of a small presentation recapping the previous nights information, an environmental exam, the grading presentations and then an introduction to steiners own ‘solution selling’ technique. All in all there is a lot of information to take in and with the knowledge that you have an exam on body products the next day it really can come across as totally overwhelming and terrifying but just take a slow breath and focus yourself…you can do this! Of course the more you study in the weeks before the easier it’ll be at the academy.
So now I’m lay in my bunk, finishing writing this and then heading to bed for my 5:45am alarm in the morning. I’ll shoot this up tomorrow some point when I get myself some wifi, probably at lunch at the academy. Until then if anyone has any questions just pop them in the comments!
B x
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