Student Blog
Jodie

There’s No Health Without Mental Health ⟩
October 9, 2015, by Jodie

Community Getting Involved

On Saturday, October 3rd, I participated in the 2015 NAMIWalks LA with a bunch of my classmates as “Team Occupational Therapy,” led by one of our clinical faculty members, Dr. Delgado! NAMI stands for the National Alliance on Mental Illness and the overall purpose of NAMI is to change how Americans view persons with metal illness. NAMI is the nation’s largest grassroots mental health organization dedicated to building better lives for the millions of Americans affected by mental illness.

All of the attendees met at Grand Park early in the morning for a pre-walk celebration and then we began our walk around Downtown Los Angeles to raise public awareness of mental illness and to display our support for people affected by mental illness. This was a very fun, 5k walk that took about 2 hours to complete. As I am currently in the Mental Health immersion in the program, this walk was very meaningful to me because I have the opportunity to work very closely with persons affected by mental illness at my Level I fieldwork site at Century Villages at Cabrillo. I am very committed to supporting NAMI in educating, advocating and increasing public awareness of how important mental health is. As a team, I am so happy to announce that we were able to raise over $2,000 in support of NAMI.

If you would like to learn more about NAMI, or to find out about more local NAMI events going on near you, check out their website at nami.org.

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Trojan Pride ⟩
October 4, 2015, by Jodie

Getting Involved

Last Saturday I had the opportunity to attend the 14th Annual OTAC Afternoon Tea with a Scholar, held at the USC Chan Division of Occupational Science and Occupational Therapy Center for Occupation and Lifestyle Redesign. This event was coordinated by one of our clinical faculty members, Celso Delgado Jr., OTD, OTR/L, who currently serves as our Region 2 Director for OTAC.

As the second year OTAC Student Delegate for USC, it is part of my responsibilities to assist Dr. Delgado with Region 2 events. Seen in this picture with me are Dr. Delgado and our first year OTAC Student Delgate, Erwin Borja.

The keynote speaker at this year’s event was Shawn Roll, PhD, OTR/L, FAOTA, who is an assistant professor here in our division. Dr. Roll presented on the topic of “Innovative Approaches to Advancing Occupational Performance in Individuals with Upper Extremity Musculoskeletal Disorders”. This was such an informative presentation that really captivated everyone’s attention and highlighted Dr. Roll’s breadth of knowledge and experience.

As I had the opportunity to mingle with fellow attendees at this event, it struck me just how many of our alumni go on to fulfill leadership roles within not only OTAC, but AOTA as well. I feel extremely honored and inspired to be surrounded by such influential faculty members and practitioners here at USC Chan Division of Occupational Science and Occupational Therapy!

These are just a few of the many inspiring leaders of our state association, OTAC (many of whom are USC OT alumni! 😊).

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Hawaii Nei ⟩
September 15, 2015, by Jodie

Fieldwork What are OS/OT?

Aloha lovely readers!

As I mentioned in my first blog, this blog will be entirely devoted to my first Level II fieldwork experience in Oahu, Hawaii this past summer. During our program, students are required to complete three Level I fieldwork rotations, which are one time a week for 12 weeks throughout the semester, as well as two Level II fieldworks, which are full-time for 12 weeks in the summer. I had the amazing opportunity to complete my Level II fieldwork at Queen’s Medical Center in the heart of Honolulu. This was an acute, inpatient hospital setting where I primarily worked with adults and older adults in the orthopedic & spine unit. This fieldwork experience provided me with such an immense amount of knowledge regarding all aspects of rehabilitation within an acute inpatient hospital setting. My clinical instructor provided me with an insurmountable amount of mentorship and was the most wonderful role model during my time at Queen’s Medical Center. I left this fieldwork experience feeling much more confident in my capabilities of performing as an entry-level occupational therapy practitioner within an acute inpatient hospital setting.

Once again, here is a snapshot of my time spent in Hawaii this past summer!

Well, that wraps it up for this blog about my Level II fieldwork experience. I hope you enjoyed it! Stay tuned for my next blog. 😊

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Greetings everyone! ⟩
August 31, 2015, by Jodie

School/Life Balance

Hello readers!

I am very excited to be writing my first blog as a student ambassador. Occupational therapy has been my dream job for as long as I can remember. I am very lucky to have two aunts who are both OTs and introduced me to such an amazing profession very early on in my life (6th grade to be exact!). All throughout high school and college, I had one main goal in mind: to attend USC’s #1 ranked occupational therapy graduate program. This was the fuel to my academic endeavors and every day that I spend in this program further solidifies my decision to pursue such a meaningful career.

Here is a glimpse at my first year in the program!

This was just a small snapshot of my amazing first year in the program, I hope you enjoyed the pictures! Stay tuned for more about my adventures during my second year in the program and thank you for reading my first blog! Fight on.

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