Learning how to drive is absolutely a torture for me, I’m not kidding. Even in this relatively empty country, and I have the best driving instructor – my roommate, I still feel horrible.
Knowledge test is ok, I prepared for weeks and took hundreds of mock tests, so I passed at once. A small episode is that, I was no sure if it was because I have not changed my glasses for a while, I could not see clearly with my left eye when I was doing the vision test. I was so nervous and I was literally sweating, and the officer kindly said “take your time, relax, you get this”. Luckily I passed and got my permit.
These weeks I’ve been practicing driving under my roommate’s instruction. I’m not gonna lie but she’s just the BEST driving teacher in this world. If you live in Knox and need a driver coach, contact me. She is SUPER patient and gentle, even though I am aware she is probably more nervous than me. I mean, her life is in my hand! At first I didn’t know how to step on the brake gently, so I stepped to the bottom. We, especially she, were shocked at that time. Now I know how to gradually brake, good news.
We were mostly practicing in the parking lot of the town mall, which is a large and empty place, perfect for learner driver to practice. I practiced how to steer and park there. Until today, I am still a bad parker and need A LOT practice. It’s just impossible to observe how my roommate parks, because she’s a genius and always parks extremely smoothly. She was like “just turn the wheel to the right, yep, and return here, easy peasy, got this?”. My eyes know how but my hands say nope! She always finishes parking before I realize she starts the progress, and it hurts :).
I hit the road three days ago, drove from the mall back home. It was not bad, I was not honked (maybe because it was not rush hour?). However, when I got off my car when fianlly arrived home, my legs were both shaking and my hearbeat was crazy. I had a long breath of relief, said “glad we are home alive”. The next day I drove to school, which was about 20min drive distance. Because I intentionally chose an afternoon time that didn’t have lots of cars, the road was almost mine. I drove a little bit faster, about 40 on avarage and almost 60 maximum. It was not a good experience because I’m still a new driver and it was not comfortable for me to drive this fast. I felt I couldn’t control the car because it was too fast for me. One challenge for me was that I often drove the car crooked, which was dangerous. The reason is that I have difficulty judgeing distance, so I often drive too close to the left or right. My roommate taught me how to adjust the car, so I am a little bit better now.
So to be brief, I basically know how to drive now. The difficultie are : 1) Parking; 2) Knowing how much to steer when turning; 3) Don’t panic. The biggest one must be the last one, don’t panic. I would say I don’t really enjoy driving, it’s not a good experience for timid people like me.
Anyways, hopefully I can stop being afraid of driving soon. It’s really not a good idea to live in Knox without a car!