Student Blog
I love Kate Holford!!! ⟩
January 30, 2014, by Ryan
Well, we are on our third week of classes and I feel like I have adjusted to school now. Getting into the groove with lots of reading, projects forming, etc. So I would like to take some time to talk about my love for my fellow ambassador Kate Holford. I, of course, appreciate my whole ambassador team. Everyone is so wonderfully unique which makes us a great team! But for Kate Holford, we have worked together majority of the time last semester and we were in the same cohort as well (meaning we shared a lot of our core classes together). We have been through a lot together and have become so close while adventuring into the new position of Student Ambassador as well as coming to the end of our program. We helped create an Instagram account for the division and have participated in adding photos each week, check it out if you haven’t already!!! It gives you a peek of what we do day-to-day. This all is in addition to the occasional girl talk and dancing in the office. Thank you Kate for always listening, giving me such great advice and being so supportive! I love you!
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That One Time We Went To Vegas . . . ⟩
January 29, 2014, by Kate
“OT School” (as many of us call it) does not have to be all work and no play. Many of us student ambassadors (including myself many times over) have written about our lives OUTSIDE of the OT program. We like to present to you, the reader, that there is much more to being a USC graduate student than our studies (even if that’s a close majority). Especially as an OT student, we want to depict a picture of living balanced lives, where productivity, self-care, leisure and rest are to the levels that make us the best us we can be.
Well, sometimes, leading a balanced life means that you go to Las Vegas with 30 of your friends from the OT program. Our OTSC (Occupational Therapy Student Council) Social Chairs organized and arranged for the first and second years to stay at a very reasonable hotel and get into some great nightclubs. My fellow ambassador, Clarissa, is one of the social chairs and she did an amazing job!!
I roomed with three of my good friends that I met in the program. We dressed up and went to a club on Friday night where we danced and celebrated. It was so fun to be out with them and be carefree. On Saturday, some of our friends from the first year of the program went hiking. My friends and I, however, decided to take part in a Las Vegas tradition: the all-you-can-eat buffet. It was so yummy!!!! Even though we all had stomachaches afterwards, it was so great to experience world-class food together! Saturday night we all headed out to another club where we danced and had fun; after some late night food at 12:30 am, it was time to call it a night. We were on the road back to Los Angeles the next day at 9 am. It was such a fun trip and I’m so glad I took part in it.
Here’s a picture of me and Clarissa!!
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Uselessness is Gorgeous ⟩
January 29, 2014, by Clarissa
Life Hacks School/Life Balance What are OS/OT?
Normally, there’s a little lull at the beginning of the semester before it goes into full swing but this semester hasn’t been like that at all. I hit the ground running once the semester began. I’m really busy and I love it. In order to stay balanced, though, I’ve started thinking a lot about concepts I learned last semester in my Health Promotion and Wellness class. Particularly, I thought about a lecture we had about happiness and how I can ensure I have personally meaningful moments in the midst of my hectic schedule.
I thought our happiness lecture related really well to an art exhibit I saw when I visited Chicago over the summer. It’s called “The Happy Show” by Stefan Sagmeister, an individual who struggled with depression after his mother’s death. Because of his depression, he became interested in whether or not people can train their minds to be happy, similar to how people train their bodies. This one particularly beautiful art piece of his was made out of post-it notes and spelled out “Uselessness is gorgeous.” It looked like this:
Sagmeister accompanied this art piece with a personal experience that relates to the concept of “flow” which we also learned about in our Health Promotion and Wellness class. One experiences flow when completely absorbed in a satisfying activity and ceases to notice the passage of time. By this art piece, he wrote:
Uselessness is gorgeous. I came up with a reputable technique to artificially produce a moment of bliss: take a scooter, drive it on a beautiful road with little traffic so I can ride without a helmet and feel the wind in my hair while listening to about a dozen carefully selected songs, music that I don’t know well (so it won’t have any baggage) but am likely going to like. And very important: there can be no purpose to the drive, just cruising without any goal. This recipe would send shivers down my spine every time. To identify something without any goal and without any function has its own beauty: it’s the difference between a walk in the park and a commute. It’s the different between art and design.
This quote also reminded me of a pediatrics lecture my professor Dr. Erna Blanche gave where she said that without participating in activities that we do “just for the heck of it,” life wouldn’t be worth living. I found that Sagmeister’s view really complemented OT’s value of participating in activities simply because they are meaningful.
As for me, the closest moment I’ve experienced to Sagmeister’s description of bliss was my climb up Yosemite’s Half Dome, pictured below. When I reached the top and looked over all of Yosemite Valley, I forgot about time and space. I have decided to incorporate more nature into my life this semester in order to encourage a work-life balance.
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Electives! ⟩
January 28, 2014, by Jen
The first two weeks back at school flew by. The course I’m taking this semester are:
- Hand Rehabilitation
- Dysphagia Across the Lifespan: Pediatrics Through Geriatrics
- Leadership Capstone
- Advanced Seminar in Occupational Science
- Contemporary Issues: Occupational Therapy in Early Intervention
- Independent Study at California Children’s Services (CCS)
What is so great about this semester is that the majority of courses I am taking are electives, which means I was able to customize my schedule to my interests. In my Early Intervention class, we had an assignment that involved us reading an autobiography written by a person who grew up with a disability. The story I read is titled “I’m Walking as Straight as I Can: Transcending Disability in Hollywood and Beyond” by Geri Jewell (who had a role in the show The Facts of Life). I found the story to be extremely interesting. Geri Jewel has cerebral palsy (CP) which is a motor impairment syndrome that arises during the early years of a person’s development. I am also getting a chance to work with numerous children with CP in my independent study at CCS. It is great to get to learn about a topic in class, read about a person’s actually experience, and also have the opportunity to have hands-on experience.
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Tai Chi and (Chai) Tea ⟩
January 23, 2014, by Clarissa
Classes Community Diversity What are OS/OT?
This morning, I saw a group of older adults practicing Tai Chi in a park nearby my house and I felt so happy! Why, you ask? I took a class last semester geared towards creating a community project. My group members and I interviewed experts, talked to community members, and designed a program for (you guessed it) Tai Chi!
Older adults are often at risk for falls and social isolation. In our research regarding Tai Chi, we found evidence in the literature supporting Tai Chi’s positive effects on fall prevention in older adults — it helps with factors contributing to falls like balance, coordination, and fear of falling. To address fall risk and social isolation, we decided to write a proposal for creating a Tai Chi class followed by time to socialize with tea. The social relationships built through tea time could also motivate the older adults to join our class.
We decided our target population would be older adults in Monterey Park, a city just east of downtown LA. The city has a 66.9% Asian population. In our research, we also found that Asians were less likely to talk about their lifestyle to their health providers so they may have needs that aren’t being met. The cultural familiarity of Tai Chi (and the tea!) may work to encourage their attendance to our program.
To explain the title of this blog post — my group really wanted to name our project Tai Chi and Chai Tea but had to very sadly let go of it. Chai tea’s sugar content may not be the best for older adults. The title lives on here. Woohoo!
Here’s a picture of me and my awesome group on poster presentation day!
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