Student Blog

Moving to LA ⟩
October 10, 2010, by Amanda

Housing and Transportation Living in LA

After graduating from undergrad, I needed to pack-up and move to California. Living in the OT House made sense to me! So I hope that through my student blog you will get an in-depth look at what it is like to be an occupational therapy student here at USC. To start my tour of student life, I’ll start with my experiences during my first summer.

Coming from Maryland, I was leaving my family and friends to see what West Coast life is all about. For those of you worrying about making a move like I did, graduate school is the perfect time to try living somewhere new and it provides great opportunities to meet and befriend others. LA is a big town and the thought of moving there was a little intimidating. What is amazing about coming to USC for school is the living learning experience that is a housing option called the OT House. Besides my great aunt that lives in the area, I was nervous about moving to a place where I knew no one. For this reason, I chose to spend my first year in LA living in the OT House. From our first building meeting, I already met other classmates and even had a ride to school the next day. 😊 Those same friends have since become my California family.

Another great aspect of the OT house is the convenience factor. The two-bedroom apartments come equipped with a full bedroom set (you have your own bedroom), kitchen appliances, sofas, table and chairs. All you really need is your bedding, clothes, school gear, and kitchenware. After recently graduating I only had a few weeks to pull myself together and get out to LA for the June start and there was no way I could move furniture across the country. Living in the OT house meant I had a few things less to worry about. Due to its proximity to the University Park campus, the OT house makes going to classes on the Health Science campus easy. There is a bus that runs between campuses, making driving unnecessary. Also, you are close to all the activities of the University Park campus. Events, performances, Trojan sports, intramurals, you name it and it’s right there for you. As a full time student you have access to the Rec facilities, so your gym is right there too.

Being that the apartment building that hosts the OT House is majority OT students, you have access to study groups always! If you ever need a question answered or clarification on an assignment, your neighbor can most likely help you out. The OT House was always the common meeting point between in house and out of house students and the place for groups to meet when working on group assignments. There is an RA that is an OT student and a USC OT faculty member that lives in the building as well. Basically, choosing to live there gives you instant support in your academic life.

My first experiences in LA were wonderful, many of which I can attribute to being a resident in the OT House. It was there I built my foundation for life in LA and as an occupational therapy student. Below is a picture of the sunset from my apartment in the OT house!

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Finding what is meaningful to you ⟩
October 6, 2010, by Austen

Life Hacks School/Life Balance

Occupations are the activities we fill our time with, the things we do daily. In our Occupational Therapy program, we have read a lot about how important occupations are to health and well-being, and why engaging in meaningful activities positively influences our overall quality of life. It seems obvious that doing things we enjoy helps us live healthier happier lives, but I did not really think about it until we discussed it in class. Since then, I have made a conscious effort to incorporate activities I love doing in each and every day. As a result, I am happier and more satisfied with my life.

I danced on my high school’s state champion dance team for four years. We practiced for around 15 hours a week, learning and perfecting our routines to compete. Sometimes I could not stand walking into that gymnasium room any more, I was sick of our music, and annoyed with our coach yelling at us. But when I was dancing in front of hundreds of people hearing fans cheer me on, I remembered why I love dancing. My muscles would take over and they knew exactly what to do, my mind would go blank, and time seemed to fly by. I reached what we call “flow.” But when I went to college, I stopped dancing. I started freshman year as pre-med, and had no time for it. I lost one of my most meaningful occupations. Looking back, I can see how negatively it affected me. I was low on energy, not as happy, and felt like something big was missing from my life. It is almost as if I did not realize how important and influential dancing was to me until I lost it. It was not until years later, during the first year in the OT program, that I was inspired to pick it back up again.

I joined the USC Repertory Dance Company through the School of Theater on main campus at USC. Having dance back in my life has made a huge difference in my wellbeing over the past year. I have a social network of friends in my company, I get lots of exercise, and I have a creative outlet for expression. It is a wonderful right-brain activity to balance out all the left-brain work we do in school. It is a chance to get lost in music, explore new movement, and step into the character of whoever I want to be. I can leave my problems, concerns, and anxieties at the door and forget about them during rehearsals. Picking up dance again helped me experience for myself what it is we have been learning in OT school. I now understand the role meaningful occupation plays in one’s life. Experiencing the negative effect of not dancing solidified the importance of pursuing things I enjoy doing as often as possible. I am going to continue to engage in meaningful activities such as dance because they truly make me a happier, healthier, more motivated and curious person.

What do you enjoy doing? What makes time fly by for you? What do you look forward to doing everyday? If those question bring specific things to mind, hold on the them and continue engaging in those activities. If nothing comes to mind, go out and find something that makes you happy and excited. This will make each day fulfilling and help you achieve overall wellbeing.

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Practicing Occupation at a Senior Facility ⟩
October 5, 2010, by Carissa

Fieldwork What are OS/OT?

Occupation as a treatment modality.

During this past summer fieldwork at a senior facility, I found importance of putting into practice what all of our teachers have drilled into us — using meaningful activity not only as an ends for our treatment but as a means to get there. While this idea is easier to understand with kids, as play is meaningful to most children, it definitely takes a second or third thought when dealing with older adults. What is the individual’s goal? What motivates one person doesn’t necessarily motivate someone else. After using an interest checklist to see what mattered to my clients, I found that many of them loved to dance. Without a second thought, with the assistance of my clinical instructor, we set up an occupational therapy dance group. We tried to incorporated everyone who found dancing to be meaningful, including those who had experienced strokes, those with constant pain, those in wheelchairs, those with arthritis, those with Alzheimer’s, and those who just wanted to lose weight. The dance sessions consisted of mainly merengue and cumbia, with everyone voting for these latin beats. There was also opportunity for patients to bring in some of their own music and/or instruments. We found regulars in a group of people who did not regularly attend OT, people who attended mainly for a hot pack, or people with a tendency to be unmotivated for therapy. After about 5 weeks, with sessions 2x/week for 30 minutes, people were reporting decreased pain and losing weight (about 5 pounds!). Using occupation sets up for success. Not only did the clients enjoy themselves and benefit from treatment, but it was also therapeutic for me. I loved it! This made for an exciting summer far different from the typical 9-5 desk job.

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Why Occupational Therapy? ⟩
September 30, 2010, by Yao

What are OS/OT?

I actually started off wanting to be a lawyer, then a forensic scientist, then a physical therapist and finally after all that I was introduced occupational therapy and found my passion. My mother introduced the profession to me because she was aware at the time that I wasn’t sure about my career decision. She noticed that the occupational therapists at her facility were always fun to be around and thought it would be a good idea for me to shadow them for a day. If anything I could at least have a day of my summer entertained by hilarious people who happened to be occupational therapists. During my observation it didn’t seem like therapy at all the whole time the residents were talking about what they were doing when they were my age all the while working on everyday activities like dressing. Everyone was always laughing and every single resident that day told me that they loved coming to occupational therapy because they felt as if they were hanging out with friends and happened to be working on their skills while visiting. Later that day I asked one of the head occupational therapists there what they liked most about being an occupational therapist and he mentioned that he loved occupational therapy because at the end of the day its all about the person. The treatment is based on the resident and when all is said and done it’s a profession that empowers the patients/residents with skills and encouragement that allow them to be the master of their own treatment. At that moment it all came together because the idea of empowering people to help themselves had been a theme throughout my life and one of the lenses I use in my interpretation of the world and interaction with people. That’s why I chose occupational therapy and ever since I’ve never considered another profession other than occupational therapy.

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Why Occupational Therapy? ⟩
September 30, 2010, by Pierre

What are OS/OT?

My interest since high school was to help people through rehabilitation. My interests matured from athletic trainer, to psychologist, to physical therapist, and finally to occupational therapist. As you can see I transitioned between body and mind disciplines throughout my educational career, and after much questioning, deliberation, and encouragement, I chose to enter into the field of occupational therapy. My second interest was in the area of pediatrics. Currently, I am doing part-time fieldwork at a unified school district for school-based therapy, and am enjoying it.

As I begin my 2nd year, I realized that I have made the right decision. Let me share why I enjoy learning about occupational therapy and why it was an attractive profession. Occupational therapy is a field that combines the mind and body to allow us to focus not on one part, but on both — the whole person. In a world that is progressing in technology, treatment within occupational therapy may seem simplistic or low tech. Occupations and activities that people do are simplistic in nature because we create daily habits. Dressing up, reading a book, holding a conversation with a friend, riding a bike or driving to work are some things that many individuals carry out automatically without considering its complex or simplistic nature. As occupational therapists we connect with our clients in order to discover what challenges may be in their life currently and what they want to achieve. The challenge lies in how we can help our clients relearn, recover, adapt or create their old or new occupations in their life.

I believe in occupational therapy for its creative practicality. Sometimes we say that a person can, “Make that [action] appear effortless and easy.” Occupational therapy “looks” effortless and easy, but in reality it is continually assessing dynamic changes within the client, gains within treatment, planning future goals, constant adaptation of the environment, etc.

Occupational therapy is about living today in the best way possible.
The only way to do that is to engage in life . . .
Engage in meaningful occupations . . .
Engage to experience your environment . . .
Engage to attain satisfaction . . .
Engage to improve your health.

There’s no better place to study about occupational therapy than here at USC. I chose this institution because of the long history it has had in occupational therapy. It has been the top program in the nation for nearly a decade and has produced many clinical practitioners and occupational scientists that are (and have been) at the forefront of their practice and their research. I chose occupational therapy because I want to be involved alongside the client throughout their process of rehabilitation. I want to be able to provide the opportunities to “get back to living.”

Fight on USC OT!

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