It’s been so long since I last updated or commented on fellow blogs that I love; that makes me sad! It’s not that I don’t have the time…I just need to figure out how to manage my time better!

I’m still helping out at the soup kitchen once every other week. Ever since my boyfriend came back from vacation (mid September), he’s been going with me so it’s much more fun with his company. ^_^ The head chef has gotten to know our faces pretty well, so she recognizes us each time. She said she’ll teach us how to do the actual cooking next time. @_@ I don’t know how I feel about that; I can cook at home, but under the guidance of the head chef…let’s just say I don’t wanna be the receiving end of the stick when I mess something up and she gets mad. Lol. *sweatdrop*

Still helping out at the Viet. cancer foundation once a week and sometimes on Sunday events. I don’t spend much time there, but it surprisingly all adds up, and I think any place would be happy to have free help regardless of how many hours.

What’s (kinda) new that I haven’t updated about are the other places I’ve been going to. I started my optometric internship at an optometry office about a month ago. Unfortunately, I didn’t get the thorough training I thought I would, and my internship hours are mostly during quiet hours (little to no patients), so I haven’t had much practice at all. The doctor has other interns who have been with her for at least some months, so they are pretty experienced. I could tell she was getting really irritated with the mistakes I’ve been making. She did talk to me at the end of one day, saying she shouldn’t be super hard on me because she forgets I’m new and she isn’t used to someone new…so that was helpful. I can still tell she’s irritated with my mistakes, but I hope I can become good at it really soon, despite the lack of real practice I’ve been getting. This other girl and I are the only two interns who are new right now, and she reports the same experiences as me, so I’m not alone at least.

I also started volunteering at another optometry office in late August. At first it was overwhelming, but I caught on to things quickly and it was pretty fun.

In between all of these free hours of labor, I was constantly searching for job ads and applying to jobs – as I expressed in past blog posts, I’ve been super concerned about getting some kind of income since I’ve never had a paying job and my funds are running out (I’ve got loans to pay, etc). Between all of this volunteering/interning and job searching and household stuff (cleaning/cooking) that’s all I really did most of my days.

And then things got a little complicated at the optometry office I was volunteering at…Only after a few weeks of being there, they started asking me if I was interested in employment there. That was pretty exciting, but unfortunately, they kind of baited me a bit? At first I was advised that they usually don’t hire people until months down the line of volunteer work first. But then they kept showing interest in me, and eventually asked me to come in more often before they would hire me. It upset me that I was working all of these hours for free with no real indication when I’d be hired. At one point they asked me to come in for a couple of full days before they would definitely hire me. I did the 9am – 6pm grind, but nothing came out of it…nobody said anything about making me official. Well, it turns out one of the managers was sick with food poisoning, so he kind of forgot about me and apologized. They told me they’d get me paperwork and yada yada. However, at that point I was still confused whether I was an employee or not! Nobody gave me any paperwork, I wasn’t clocking in my hours. I asked the other manager about it, and she said to me I was already officially an employee for a few days! When I told her I didn’t have any paperwork or anything, she was surprised and said I was supposed to have gotten that already!

So NOW, I’ve got most of the paperwork done and apparently I’ve already officially had a job for a few days. Hopefully they count my hours (I’ve written a log for them) and get me to clock in soon rather than recording hours…and hopefully I can catch on to learning everything fast, because it’s a super hectic and confusing environment. Fingers crossed.

But now that I finally am a bit more settled, I hope I can manage time better to go back to studying and doing other things like blogging and reading. ^_^