Driving Test Jitters

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After 11 months and 121 hours of lessons I will be taking my driving test tomorrow, again. The first time I took it was just over 2 years ago and after 50 hours of lessons.

I am not a natural driver. And jitters is far too mild a word. I’ve turned off my mobile phone so I can go into a cone of silence pre-test. I really want to pass so this stage of my learning can be finished and done with. I am hoping against hope that I don’t have to retake the test. Because I know that as long as my nerves don’t cause me to do something really stupid I will pass. It wasn’t until I hit about 100 hours that I actually stopped being riddled with anxiety every time I had a lesson.

I went through four instructors, two men and two women. I was always going to be more comfortable with a woman instructor and so the bulk of my lessons were with them (one in Sydney for my first attempt, and the other on the Central Coast for my current attempt). My Sydney instructor, Mira, had a thick Czech accent, also learned how to drive in her thirties, talked alot and completely put me at ease. If it wasn’t for her I think I would have been rocking back and forth in the fetal position rather than to continue on with learning to drive. I have no idea what the anxiety is about. Just a fear of the unknown I guess.

My first attempt ended in a fail and I can honestly say that it was the first time I tried to accomplish something and failed. And even though many people fail the first time, the failure wounded my poor perfectionist. Before I had a chance to retake the test, I was too heavily pregnant. For awhile I argued that I was too busy with a newborn baby to go back to learning. But really that was just a convenient excuse and eventually I started up again. Because I knew that while I had gotten by not driving in an area with extremely limited public transport with one baby, there is no way I could do the same if I had any more. And even more than that, I wanted the freedom to be able to get around on my own and not rely on my husband/sister/friends to get me from A to B. It was never a problem in Sydney because public transport was just easier most of the time.

In hindsight (ahh perfect hindsight), I wished I had done it when I was younger and still had the illusions of my own invincibility because I think I would have been more oblivious about the whole thing. But I didn’t. And ever since I’ve felt as though there is this great milestone of adulthood that I have missed out on.

As my test date has loomed closer and closer I have felt more and more nervous. I’m trying to find a balance between visualising a positive outcome and staying in the moment and not thinking too far ahead. It’s not going so well. But at least I don’t feel sick nervous like I did last time. The Googy did an excellent job of keeping me relatively distracted today with lots of giggles, chasing and general shenanigans:

I’m hoping that the next post I write will start with something like this: ‘Victory is mine!!!’ but if it doesn’t there’s always next week – I wouldn’t want the weight of expectation to get to me tomorrow.