Interview and feature image by Anna Day
Lucy Shannon
Bachelor of Exercise Physiology (Honours)
Are you comfortable in there or do you want to sit in the bean bag couch? Bean bag couch. Cool. So, my name is Lucy and I’m in my fourth year of exercise physiology, at the moment.
So… I’m very, very squeamish. Yeah. I used to watch cartoon videos of surgery sometimes and that would make me, like, see stars. And in first year uni in anatomy, you have to look at cadavers and I didn’t really fully understand that… So the first couple of times it was okay and they’d sort of given us a pep talk saying ‘you don’t actually have to go in’ but everyone was going in, so I didn’t want to be the loser who didn’t but oh I should’ve been. And then on my third time going in, um, I walked in with my lab coat and I didn’t have any friends in my anatomy class as well and then we’re looking at the leg with the foot which, again, it was okay. It was fine. It was all fine until the lady goes ‘…and look at what this muscle does’ and she tugged on the muscle and it made the foot, like, flex and I went ‘oh, okay’ and I felt a bit hot. Temperature started going up and you know they’d said, ‘the temperature’s set at a cool, like, 15 degrees, so you shouldn’t be getting hot in there.’ But I’m getting a bit hot and I was just like, ‘look away for a minute, you’re only in here for another five minutes.’ So I looked to the corner of the room and there’s a fucking head. There is a head in the corner, just looking back at me and I left the room and never went back in but I still passed.
So many. You know this too. They all stem from each other. There’s little parts that stem from this but my biggest fear is flying. I hate it and I’m okay—actually, no I’m not. I hate flying in itself, but I think that stems from tight spaces being trapped and the heights—it’s just a death trap. You shouldn’t fly. You just shouldn’t fly. And I think I woke up to that in about year five because I was always fine with flying until I was old enough to realise that you know in the movies where they crash in the ocean and they gently land and you know all the slides poof out and everyone jumps out I remember looking at mum and being like ‘yeah look but at least you land on water’ and mums like ‘landing on water from this height is like concrete’ and that just like woke me up to the real world. And that was it. Childhood gone. Psychologists come at me.
Oh.. my advice to 14-year-old Lucy? I think I’d probably just tell her to relax a little bit.
Like I tell myself to relax now anyway but… probably to not care what everyone thinks quite so much. Because you would know we were always the crazy ones in school and that was so much fun. But I think but sort of from 14, when I went to high school, I got very cautious about what I said when I wasn’t with my friends. I wish I had been a bit more independent outside my friendship group then. Put myself out there a little bit more. Because I do that a bit more now and that was what uni was good for. It’s so much easier. And I reckon that’s from having a job as well. In customer service, you have to speak to strangers every day.
Biggest dream. I’m one of those people who don’t think super, super far into the future or anything too crazy but my dream next year is to have either a full-time job in the EP field or at least working three days at a good EP job that I enjoy and then just staying at Ginger’s for a little bit longer. I think that’s more realistic than a full-time job straight out, but I really want to be in an EP job that I really like—and learning. Something that I can learn from as well. I don’t want to somewhere where I’m forced to be super, super independent. Because I think in your first few years it’s really important to be able to have the mentors as well so I don’t learn it all the wrong way. Although UniSA has given me a fantastic foundation. Thankyou UniSA. Now let me pass with honours. Please.
So, my research team and I are looking at chronic fatigue syndrome.
We are sort of doing it in two parts. We’ve made a survey that we gave out to health professionals who treat people living with MECFS and we got really good responses on that. Everyone was so lovely. So what we are trying to see is whether their perceptions on physical activity and exercise is beneficial or harmful and why. And sort of part of that is what do you believe makes a source trustworthy and stuff. In the area, it’s really sad because there is so much misinformation out there that everyone is confused and people are told the wrong things so it’s just a cycle of mistrust. We want to take a step back and publish this that way future research into chronic fatigue can stem from it and work out what direction it needs to go in and what needs to be fixed.
Ugh, Folklore. Gosh, love it. I think, genuinely, it could be my favourite album. That’s hard because Lover was—there’s just so many good ones. My new favourite track at the moment—it changes every week and exile will always be the absolute fave—but I’m loving peace. The first listen I was like ‘meh it’s good’ but now it’s cool. And cardigan and betty were just like old, throwback Taylor Swift. Literally, whenever I get into the car its just Taylor Swift shuffle. Nah, it’s actually the best album ever and that’s not even a big call. That’s FACTS—and leave that on there. That’s fact. Come at me. Taylor Swift is talented. She didn’t deserve what she got. Yeah, I’m changing my honour thesis: ‘How Taylor Swift can benefit from exercise physiology.’ I wish.
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