by k1f0 on 30/12/2024
Hello there, after about eleven months of silence.
A lot of things happened this year and I wanted to take the opportunity, with only one day left in 2024, to reflect on some things here.
This year I completed my last year of the Higher Technical College I attended here in Austria and with that got my graduation certificate or "Maturazeugnis" in German, which gains you a lot of good job opportunities. The things I learned during my time in school were sometimes pretty boring, but in some occasions also very useful, and I am forever grateful for some of the teachers that I had the pleasure of attending their classes.
I thought about my future educational career a lot and if it would make sense to pursue the path of attending an university for a CS degree or similar. But as things stand I don't really feel the need or motivation to do it and I hope I will get a good job in IT nonetheless.
When you're done with your educational career in Austria, as a male citizen, you have to perform either six months of military service or nine months of community service. The latter option can be a lot of different things, including working in emergency medical services. In Austria, this field is largely covered by the Austrian Red Cross, except for our capital city, Vienna. But since I don't live in Vienna I chose to serve my nine months of community service at a district office of the Austrian Red Cross.
Emergency medical qualifications in Austria differ a bit from other countries around the world, for example we can attain a qualification that is known as "Rettungssanitäter" with 140 hours of theoretical education and 160 hours of practical training. Upon completion of these minimum hours of training, there is an additional final exam that you must pass, which consists of both a practical and theoretical part. This qualification can be loosely compared with an EMT-B in the USA.
As soon as you're a qualified "Rettungssanitäter" or "RS" for short, you're basically a part of the emergency response services in your area and operate an emergency response vehicle with either one or two additional people alongside you. But you might not only drive to mission that are qualified as emergencies but also do stuff like transporting elderly people who don't have access to a car or simply need assistance to a doctor or the hospital. These missions are known as "Krankentransporte" and aren't in particular time critical.
In the duties during my practical training and also after I completed the final exam, I learned (and still learn) a lot of stuff that was completely new to me. When you're in IT for a long time, you tend to spend a lot of time in front of your PC and generally loose contact with other people. Especially since I consider myself a rather introverted person, switching from this state of home-office and PC-sitting into emergency medical services was a whole different world. Although, I would simply call it a breath of fresh air.
The skills and qualifications you gain while performing your training and work duties are invaluable and literally help you safe lives. Nothing has ever filled me with more joy than a grateful patient that we transported to the hospital after they broke their leg or otherwise needed medical assistance. It simply gives you that "Hell yeah, I did something important!" kind of feeling, and I enjoy that a lot. I also met so many wonderful colleagues and people which are a joy to work alongside with.
I started my community service in August this year, and so I still have until April next year until it ends. Going into it, I didn't really know if I would like it or not, but I always wanted to try this kind of work, and now I can confidently say that I like it a lot. When your community service ends, you have the opportunity to voluntarily stay a part of the Austrian Red Cross, which is also something I want to do now.
This grants you the ability to perform a service now and then alongside your normal job. This can either be when demand for emergency services is high, or you simply have the time to substitute someone else spontaneously. I think it will be a great variety that complements my future IT job and hopefully secures emergency services here in Austria and supports the Red Cross.
In some aspects, 2024 wasn't a great year, but for me personally in retrospect, I think it was not so bad after all. Having said that, I hope 2025 will be as good or better. I look forward to my time after completing community service, although I will also miss the time working full-time as RS.
In a more global view, it seems to me as if people just search for opportunities to hate each other these days. They look at other people a lot more than they should look at themselves. People with a lot of influence fuel wars and with that indirectly kill people without even taking a look at the bigger picture. They manifest their own views and don't even try to accept other people's views. And if we're honest, we can apply those things to smaller and bigger groups of people, everywhere and around the planet.
But let's not forget the things that brought positive change. The things where we worked together to make the world a better place. When nationality, religion or gender made no difference, since we're all human. The times when collaboration was the center of attention and produced the big things that we look up to. As long as we openly work together to create great things, I think we'll have a great time, or what do you think?
Until next year.
~ k1f0