Driving in the U.K.

Hello Everyone,

So, during the week, it was my first time ever driving on U.K. roads…and there was one major difference that stood out to me from the roads in the U.A.E.

This was the size of the road lanes. Oh, my goodness, they are incredibly tight! I could be feeling this more because I am so used to another two feet on either side of me. This aspect of driving in the U.K.  scared me and made me nervous. It reminded me of a scene from the movie ‘The Holiday’. Where Cameron Diaz’s character is driving on U.K. roads for the first time too.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ymGpwwkyrxk – Link for the scene in the movie.

For the first half, an hour I was convinced that other drivers were going to hit my car! Until my partner pointed out that if I look at the roads there is a distinct pattern on them/a guide. He said-

‘Just look at the road there is a shiny part then a darker part then again another shiny part. Put yourself in the middle of the dark middle part and you will be fine. The road is like that because of wear and tear of where other people drive on the road. So really if you follow that path you will be okay.’

He was right! As soon as I chose to go down one guide down the road I felt reassured that myself, passengers and the car was a lot safer. I am still quite nervous about how much or should I say how much space isn’t there, I have for the lanes but I feel comforted that I have a guide of where I should be.

On reflection, I realised that this is how I feel about the Module 3. I am so nervous that something is going to go wrong or I will do something wrong that I start to feel stressed. I started to think of what I feel is a guide just like the road to help reassure me. I decided my guides or path that I use to reassure my self is a variety of things on the course. The module handbook, the readers, skype sessions and the SIG groups. I find reaching out to these contacts extremely useful because it calms me to talk about everything that may be a worry or to do with my inquiry. So even though I might start to feel nervous and scared and make the facial expressions that Cameron Diaz does in ‘The Holiday’ while this journey continues, I know that to find my path/guide I just need to reach out to some of the above example.

To add onto SIG groups, when talking to Paula during the skype session last Tuesday, we briefly talked about the definition of what makes a SIG group. I believed that your SIG group was only a SIG group if your inquiry topics were similar but per Paula, it doesn’t have to be just that! It can be with people with different topics if you talk about your inquiry and help each other out as another form of communication within the course, that makes it a SIG group. So, I started that session with one SIG group and ended it with three!

Thanks for reading.

Cassie V.