Student Blog
Life Hacks

What This Period of Chaos Has Taught Me ⟩
June 12, 2020, by Nmachi

Life Hacks

It’s safe to say that the past few weeks and months have been nothing short of confusing and chaotic. It is so easy to get into the habit of complaining without striving toward finding beneficial solutions. Here’s a few things that I have learned over the past 3 months:

1. Spending time with family is necessary.

Due to COVID-19 health restrictions, all USC students were encouraged to return home to quarantine beginning in late March. This news was not pleasant for the majority of the student body, but I was especially bummed because that meant that I would not be able to complete my freshman year of college on campus.

Moving back home was definitely bittersweet. On one hand, I was disappointed because I wanted to spend the remaining two months of the semester with my friends while enjoying the last bit of the traditional dorm life. Alternatively, I was grateful to be healthy and to be able to go back home to my family. While being quarantined, I’ve utilized this time to the best of my ability; I have successfully created an at-home workout regimen that I do with my sister, played extensively with my two-year-old nephew, and caught up on my favorite shows! Making memories with my family while being at home has been very rewarding and was possible because of the current global situation.

2. Take time to reflect and better yourself.

One of the goals I made at the beginning of the year was to read more. Sounds simple enough, but being a full-time college student and young-adult, it can be difficult to put down the phone and pick up a captivating read. Nevertheless, this time of social distancing has provided me with the opportunity to focus on bettering myself as an individual by reflecting and taking in useful knowledge through reading. My latest read was The Four Agreements by Don Miguel Ruiz, which is a self-help book that emphasizes the importance of finding inner peace and self-love before trying to be that peace and love for others. I have learned that taking a moment to just be still and reflect daily can truly change the entire trajectory of your whole day.

3. Educate yourself with local/global issues. It’s crucial to stay up-to-date.

It may seem obvious, but staying informed on issues regarding the well-being of this country is vital. Just because a recurring tragedy doesn’t directly affect your community does NOT mean that you should remain silent and complacent; it should urge you to stand up for what is right by all means (verbally, financially, etc.).

During this remote time away from our regular schedules, I implore you to take these tips into consideration. You will be surprised at how much you can evolve for the better!

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A Busy Day in Primary Care Fieldwork — from Home! ⟩
June 11, 2020, by Daniel

Fieldwork Life Hacks

This summer I am doing my level 2 fieldwork with my OTD residency site under the Lifestyle Redesign for Chronic Conditions Lab (LRCC) in primary care at the LAC+USC Adult West Clinic. This OTD residency is designed to expand occupational therapy (OT) services in primary care, focused on addressing chronic condition management among patients with diabetes and/or hypertension, using a Lifestyle Redesign® approach. This summer I am being trained by the current OTD Resident in preparation to take over the full caseload this Fall.

Currently, the primary care clinic does not have a video platform and we are not allowed to use Zoom to interact with patients, thus all of the appointments are three-way phone visits using Doximity (HIPAA compliant) with supervision from my clinical instructor (CI) through the phone and Zoom. I am able to lead appointments in English and Spanish, which is valuable for our predominantly Spanish speaking community at the clinic. The phone visits can be beneficial for some patients as they don’t have to travel far to get to their appointments and can talk to their providers from the comfort of their home. However, there are also barriers for our patients such as not having a quiet space at home or disconnected phone lines due to being unable to pay their phone bill as a result of the pandemic. We do our best to contact all our patients and provide as much support as possible to help them navigate these barriers and be able to manage their health.

Each day can look very different when doing telehealth in primary care, and below I wanted to share an example of a typical busy Wednesday! On this particular day, I started my day with an OTFP in-service learning about mental health when utilizing Lifestyle Redesign® approaches. Next, my CI and I started calling patients since we had done chart reviews the day before. During our phone visits, we discussed topics such as healthy eating, physical activity, stress management, medication adherence, habits and routines, resources, etc., to support their diabetes and/or hypertension diagnosis and overall health management. In the middle of the day we had consecutive meetings to discuss patient progress and how to better support them (care management); fieldwork/residency updates, logistics, and an opportunity to ask for guidance with clinical approaches (fieldwork supervision); and daily clinic updates and projects (daily brief). And perhaps you are wondering . . . when do you eat? Well, there are days when we don’t get an official lunch break, so we do our best to get food in between meetings! Thereafter, we began calling patients again for the rest of the day and documented in between appointments and during our assigned admin/documentation time at the end of the day.

Typical Wednesday

• 8-9AM – Occupational Therapy Faculty Practice (OTFP) In-Service
• 9-11AM — Patient Phone Visits
• 11AM-12PM — Care Management Meeting
• 12-1PM — Fieldwork Supervision Meeting
• 1:05-1:30PM — Clinic Daily Brief
• 1:30-4PM — Patient Phone Visits
• 4-5PM — Admin Time/Documentation

Tips for working from home

• Take stretch breaks: This is one of the most important things you can do for your body. Taking stretch breaks is important to prevent pain, aches, and cramps later on! You can even do stretches while sitting down.
• Snacks & water: Don’t forget to stay hydrated and have snacks in reach to have energy throughout the day!
• Ergonomics: Posture, posture, posture! Please take care of your bodies and follow proper posture and chair tips when working from home. This can easily be overlooked and if you don’t have fancy equipment, there are ways you can get creative! Your body will thank you later.
• Prepare meals: This can save you time on days when you may have a short lunch break or none at all!

I hope this paints a picture of what a busy day of telehealth primary care may look like! My intention is to be transparent with you all and share the good, the bad, and the busy days. I am often exhausted at the end of the day, but I am excited to continue to learn and the patients make it all worth it!

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A Whole New Virtual World ⟩
June 9, 2020, by Bethany

Life Hacks

During this time of social distancing, we’ve learned that it can be difficult to stay in touch with people. Especially as college students, moving away from campus and being back home was quite a transition. And my class’ position as seniors only amplified our experience. We were planning on cramming last minute hang outs together into our final weeks, making the most our proximity, but those weeks never came. However, over time, we began to get creative with the ways that we stayed connected. And even as things slowly open up, there are still some creative ways to stay in touch that we will continue to do.

Zoom Game Night
One of the student organizations I was a part of was Intervarsity Trojan Christian Fellowship. We have a tradition of having Senior Office Hours through the last week for the seniors to hang out with everyone in the fellowship. Organizing these virtually was difficult, but we found a lot of fun games that work over video chat! One of my personal favorites (and one at which I am unfortunately not that great) is Codenames. In Codenames, you work with your team to help them make the correct selections on a grid of 25 random words by using only one word clues.

Skribbl.io is an online version of pictionary that has one player draw at a time while the others type in guesses. It is even more fun to add the element of video chat to watch everyone’s reactions to the others’ drawings, sometimes bemoaning their own artistic ability. Be careful, though: Spelling counts on this game! Although the program will let you know when your answer is close, you still have to spell it correctly for the answer to go through. One word given was Colosseum, and although the participant drew a beautiful rendition, her audience unfortunately consisted of USC seniors, who were all too familiar with the Los Angeles Memorial Coliseum, where our football team plays every home game. Watching the numerous attempts and re-attempts at spelling was frustrating, but garnered laughs all the same.

You can find many more games here, on a list compiled by another socially-distancing college student. The list is even organized by type of game, from board games to card games and even escape rooms! The author is ever updating the list, so if you have site recommendations, you can send them her way through the link on the document. You’ll find some old favorites, but I highly recommend trying something new, too! I learned Settlers of Catan through the online version, a challenging but overall fun experience.

Team Challenges
My family has taken this time to keep in touch with extended family members as well. Through Marco Polo, a video messaging app, each group of cousins takes turns challenging the other families to post a video in the group. The first challenge was a family dance challenge, where each family choreographed and performed a 30+ second clip. Then we sent the videos to our grandparents, and they came up with their own categories of choreography, enthusiasm, costuming, and more to rank each performance. I’m proud to say that my family got top marks for enthusiasm when the dog showed up wearing sunglasses for the opening. We’ve also done challenges for mimicking old family photos, recreating a movie scene, and re-writing the lyrics to a song to reflect our social distancing experiences. The challenges are a great way to stay in touch, keep younger cousins busy, and see everyone’s creative side!

Start A Series
Now that we know that many of our gatherings will continue online, what better time to start a series with someone. Netflix Party is one app that allows different users to simultaneously watch the same content. If the content is not through Netflix, there is also a screen-share option through video chat. Anything from TV shows to different movie series, Friends to Harry Potter. Having a series is a nice way to keep continuity and to ensure that you regularly stay in touch with your watch group, because you can’t not watch the next installment!

These are only a few examples of the many ways we’ve learned to keep in touch as the world changes. And even in the future, as things open back up, I look forward to continuing to use these strategies to maintain relationships. Hopefully, you can take advantage of some of these suggestions or come up with some creative ones of your own!

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The Benefits of Remote Learning ⟩
June 8, 2020, by Savi

Life Hacks

Pursuing my Entry-Level Professional Master of Arts Degree at USC in the Chan Division of Occupational Science and Occupational Therapy has provided me with a plethora of opportunities to grow as a student and as a future OT. I have been challenged by the curriculum, by my peers, and by my professors to think outside of the box and develop innovative ways to overcome a variety of barriers and challenges. Out of all these challenges, one of the biggest was transitioning our curriculum to remote learning due to the COVID-19 pandemic.

As many who know me would agree, I am not particularly tech-savvy, I am an extremely hands-on learner, and I thrive in social settings. For those reasons, the transition to remote learning seemed somewhat daunting to me. In order to overcome the frustration and fear I had, I decided to develop a list of the benefits of remote learning that I discovered over the last few months. This helped me focus on the positive aspects of remote learning and find the motivation to overcome the hurdles I faced in order to succeed both academically and socially under the circumstances.

For those of you reading this who are about to start their first semester with us at USC in the Chan Division, I know that this is not the same beginning you might have envisioned. For many, that may be frustrating and sad and for some, this may be great news! Whatever you are feeling is valid and I wanted to provide you with the list of the positive aspects I have discovered about taking my courses remotely. I hope that these help you to better enjoy your first semester with us! To those of you already in the program, I hope that this list also helps you if you ever feel like you’re viewing these circumstances in an extremely negative light. On that note . . . here comes my list!

The Benefits of Remote Learning:

1. No commute: You can roll right out of bed and into class, plus you can wear your pajamas to school!
2. Creativity Boost: As an OT, the number one skill we utilize is creativity. Transitioning to an online format has challenged us to become more creative. Whether that is altering an in-person group therapy session to fit a video conference format, discovering the best way to present a group research paper to our class online, or discovering occupations to utilize during, in between or before class that help us sustain engagement in class, we will all become more well-rounded OTs because of these experiences.
3. A better understanding of who your professors are outside of the classroom: I know what you might be thinking . . . how would you get to know someone better through a virtual format than you would in person? Great question! This was the first time I got to see some of my professors and other faculty outside of a true classroom setting. I was able to meet my professors’ family members, animals, and friends and see them in their “comfy clothes” during our one-on-one meetings. These experiences made them even more relatable than before!
4. Greater access to office hours: Because I no longer have to travel to school to meet with my professors, I can meet with them ANY TIME! While on campus my professors would make themselves extremely accessible. Now that neither of us has to commute, it has become easier to squeeze in more meetings throughout the day.
5. Building relationships with other faculty in the division: Shout out to IT Helpdesk and A/V Technician David Xie, Webmaster Paul Bailey, and the rest of the IT team for helping me overcome the many hurdles I have faced as a student who is not tech-savvy.
6. Hearing from more students in your class: Because students can utilize both the chat and the unmute feature, more students can respond to a question posed by the professor during class. Although there is limited time to hear from students during lectures, the chat feature allows for an unlimited amount of responses. This has given me the opportunity to learn from a lot of my classmates’ opinions and experiences.
7. Enjoying yoga, meditation, or even a quick nap during a class break! I promise these are very revitalizing occupations, so I urge you to take advantage of them while you can.

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A Semester Like No Other ⟩
May 31, 2020, by Lamoni

Classes Life Hacks

As we all know, COVID-19 has changed a lot of things. That includes our program. It was quite a surprise for us all when we left for spring break and were told that we would not be returning. Everything happened so quickly. A friend from home was supposed to visit but decided to cancel their flight one day before their arrival. A few days later, I received an email that encouraged everyone to leave campus. That same night, my dad told me that I needed to come home and a flight was booked for the next day. While that was a whirlwind, I packed up all of my things with the belief that I would return next month. Most of my belongings, including my car, stayed in Los Angeles while I headed home.

Slowly, reality sunk in and USC announced that we were moving to remote learning. That meant that instead of taking the shuttle to campus, I would be taking all of my classes in my room. The joy and laughter that I once shared with my classmates would now be contained behind a computer screen. Rather quickly, within the first week of online classes, my eyes felt strained and my back started to hurt. I wasn’t prepared to take classes this way. I also began having trouble staying organized. Something about walking to another classroom helped me to sort my courses and organize my thoughts. Changing Zoom links didn’t do that for me. My research moved online too. So did the student organizations that I am a part of. Then, celebrations like birthday parties were online as well. It was a strange feeling because, though I no longer had to commute anywhere, I felt like I was just barely keeping up. On top of that, I now live in a different time zone and have to constantly remind myself that the meeting scheduled for 5PM is actually 7:00.

We’ve now started our full semester of remote learning — a complete load of five courses online for an entire 11 weeks! But I will not be taken off guard this time; I have prepped. Here are some things that are working for me: I have finally begun using Google Calendar (I have no idea how I’ve gone without it). Google Calendar allows me to use multiple time zones. For me, that means that it shows my schedule in both Pacific Time and Central Time. Additionally, it syncs with my computer’s calendar which syncs to my phone which syncs to my watch. And, just in case digital reminders aren’t enough, I also have a whiteboard calendar and a planner. In times like this, you have to cover all grounds. For seating, I have a designated small pillow for my lower back. For my eyes, I have blue light glasses. For energy, I keep a jar of trail mix on my desk. My watch also gives me reminders to stand and I use those reminders for stretch breaks. During class breaks or lunch break, I try to take a step outside to breathe in some fresh air. When classes are over for the day, instead of delving into homework or assignments right away, I give my eyes another break. Typically, I will either read for pleasure or exercise in my backyard.

This semester is different, therefore it requires a lot of adaptations and modifications. But, we’re OTs. We got this!

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