Out of Focus - the diary of a student radiographer.

Wednesday, March 03, 2004

Lead aprons

As I mentioned before, I have spent most of my life not knowing what job I am going to do when I grow up.

That's not to say I haven't spent the last 15 years trying to find out. My first job, for no better reason than I couldn't think of anything else to try, was as a laboratory assistant at an agrochemicals plant. The job was OK and they paid for me to do part-time study but after a few years I got bored. As I tended to spend a fair amount of my time fiddling with the computers rather than doing lab work, I figured this would be a good direction to try next.

My Dad knew someone who worked in the IT dept of one of the 'big four' banks and he got me an interview to go on their IT trainee programme. This was fine and I happily wrote mainframe code for a few years until reorganisation and cr@ppy management stepped in and I ended up doing boring, boring system testing, admin and finally, literally nothing. So I asked for voluntary redundancy, got it, and got a new job with the local council doing user support and training.

In this job I discovered the joys of helping people. I hated trying to teach a small roomful of people but working with one person at a time was great, so this is why I started working in a hospital. I'm really pleased I spent the last year as an HCA. I get to work without having to do any serious brainwork, I have no responsibilities and I am fitter. But now I'm getting bored again. The ole brain needs a challenge. To this end I have decided to apply to University, having rejected notions of becoming a nurse or a midwife, to train as a radiographer. Of course this depends on them accepting me but I have put my application in so all I can do is wait.


All the above waffle is the explanation as to why I spent the day in the Medical Imaging department at the hospital today. I got to see several x-rays being taken, a CT scan, an MRI scan, some ultrasound examinations and, wahey, a chap having a barium enema.

0 Comments:

Post a Comment

<< Home