Student Blog
School/Life Balance
Good food and conversation ⟩
November 8, 2011, by Floyd
Community School/Life Balance
Seriously, I think my class hosts a potluck almost every week! Whether it’s for a USC football game, someone’s birthday, or just a Saturday, we are always grubbing on delicious home-made foods and having tons of laughter. Just thinking about this past weekend and the food that everyone brought to the potluck makes me so hungry. Not only was the food great, but it was wonderful to be able to meet my peers outside of school to catch up on our personal lives. I feel that my class really values each other and sincerely wants to know about how each other are doing.
For this potluck, we created it for a faculty dinner where we invite a faculty member from our program to talk outside of school. We had Dr. Samia Rafeedie, one of our esteemed professors and practicing OTs come this week. It was nice to chit-chat about her life and about her pregnancy . . . she is 8 months pregnant. We got her a children’s book and signed it with our love and luck. All I all, we had good times and great conversations that we will always remember.
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Halloween Weekend ⟩
November 2, 2011, by Chris
Living in LA School/Life Balance
Halloween weekend was quite eventful. It started off with me catching a 9:30am flight to San Francisco for a fair at USF. Immediately after the fair I made my way to the airport to catch the first half of the USC v. Stanford game. I barely made it through security in time to catch the opening kickoff. I was able to watch most of the first half before having to board my plane back to Los Angeles. My plane landed in time for me to listen to the end of regulation and I made it home to watch the three overtimes that followed. After the game, my roommate and I decided to get our costumes ready for the greatest Halloween party ever. We actually planned a costume change during the party. We showed up to the party as Forrest Gump and Chinese take-out, but changed to Things 1&2 during the party. Now, it’s back to the reality of class and work.
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Spartan Race and OT school? ⟩
October 5, 2011, by Chris
Living in LA School/Life Balance
I’ve decided that I’m going to register to compete in the Spartan Race in Malibu next month. For those of you who don’t know, the Spartan Race is a 3 mile obstacle course involving mud running, rope climbing, balance beams, etc. I’ve started to kick up my training recently and it will be interesting to see if I can maintain my work-life balance. The USC OT flag football team will start its season on friday. Hopefully we don’t get stuck in an all male league again.
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Procrastination . . . I Mean Occupation! ⟩
September 30, 2011, by Alix
Life Hacks School/Life Balance
I’m pretty busy this semester, so when distractions come up throughout the week, I ignore them. For about five minutes. Then I move through stage two of the procrastination phase, mostly involving profound guilt, shame, and self-beratement. Finally, I give in. For example, I am in the middle of planning my wedding. As some of you probably know, a person could literally fill 60 hours a week with wedding planning. There are always details to iron out, vendors to contact, and logistics to agonize over. (Especially since our wedding is taking place in a field, under a tree, with no infrastructure or electrical outlets.) Plus, the internet contains a seeminly endless supply of wedding blogs, all filled with pictures of perfectly executed events and reasons that you should be panicking about yours. And this is in addition to the wedding magazines that arrive practically daily at my front door. I find myself wondering what kind of dessert to serve, and then spending three hours “researching” the (very complex and elusive) answer. But then the other day I had a brilliant realization: Maybe this isn’t procrastination. Maybe it’s an occupation! Maybe planning my wedding is one of my leisure occupations! And being in OT school, I of all people should know that health requires a balance of work, rest, and leisure. So, in reality, I should be proud of myself. Right?
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Student by Day, Athlete by Night ⟩
September 28, 2011, by Kimberly
Living in LA School/Life Balance
While in the OT program, our time is taken up primarily by either being in class or studying/doing projects related to class. But for those of us who need to get out and be active and were previously athletes in high school or college, finding time to work-out is essential. Last year a group of my fellow students trained and ran the LA Marathon. Others take classes through USC, surf, do yoga, or form their own running groups on the beach for example. This year, in order to keep myself on a work-out schedule, I decided to train for the LA Triathlon. I have done all three sports (swimming, biking, and running) throughout my life, so it wasn’t too big of a jump to combine all three.
The race was this past Sunday and it was a blast! We started in Venice Beach and swam in the Pacific, then biked up Venice Blvd and Olympic Blvd to downtown LA. The final run was right through the middle of the LA skyscrapers. It was neat to be a part of something so huge and with people who were as crazy as me to sign up for the race. Of course there were also the professional triathletes who do this for a living, and those who had the thousands of dollars’ worth of gear. But the rest, like me, were just interested in trying something new and completing it for the sake of doing so. Overall it was an awesome experience and one to definitely go down in the books.
Though school is our main job right now, many of us in the program do make sure to take time to enjoy the outdoors and get active. Some call it finding balance, others say we are “OTing ourselves” and making sure we don’t get too overloaded with reading. Either way, LA is the perfect place to explore all kinds of options to stay active. Just get out there and give it a shot!
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