Monday, June 20, 2016

Five Reasons Why Spring Semester is the Best, and the Worst


***I wrote this at the end of spring semester, then forgot to  post it. I still consider the material/review of the semester valuable. So, here ya go!***

Nothing feels more satisfying than finishing a semester. As the huge school nerd that I am, I love crossing big projects, papers, and finals off of my tumultuous list. There is remarkable feeling of accomplishment while finishing up this semester. As hard as the past few months have been, it feel so good knowing that I did my best. As you can probably tell from what I have written, or perhaps my lack of writing, last semester was hard. I would argue that this past spring semester was one of the most challenging in my academic history. The semester was nonstop. I felt like the energizer bunny that had to keep going, and going, and going. But as exhausting as it was, it’s empowering to know I can do hard things. While I put in the work to make this semester a success, I believe in OT school you never truly work alone.


I owe this semester to my classmates, parents, friends, professors, study groups, tutors, and TAs. The degree of collaboration I have seen within my class, and the physical therapy class gives me immense faith in humanity. My classmates have been my foundation this semester. Whether it’s studying with me on the weekends, sharing study guides, giving pep-talks, or just letting me vent about how stressed out I am, I simply cannot express how grateful I am. My classmates have saved my sanity, and have taught me so much.


I’m trying to find an eloquent way of summarizing this semester, but frankly, I’m coming up short. So, here is a countdown of highlights from the past four months.


5) Losing my sanity in lab. Anatomy labs are always interesting experiences. I find them equal parts fascinating, and gross. There was typically a tipping point in studying in lab when there was no more capacity for information to enter my brain. So, typically, we just started saying neuro terms with funny accents. Weird neuro terms include, but are not limited to: infundibulum, uncus, hippocampus, and vermis. Yes people, some neuroanatomist named the midline of the cerebellum the vermis.


4) Fieldwork, an opportunity to discover how little I actually know. As I’ve discussed in previous posts, fieldwork is an incredibly opportunity to practice OT skills. However, the majority of the first fieldwork was primarily based on discovering how little I truly know. Upside of this discovery, knowing that within the next few years I will have a better understanding of what is going on. Thank heavens!!


3) Running our first mock group therapy. For our group therapy class (groups) we team up in pairs and prepare a therapy session for our classmate. Each setting and situation is different. My session was teaching anger management techniques to adolescents. My personal favorite part of groups, seeing which classmates of mine have secret acting talents. Also, there was always one classmate who had to play the flirt, it became the running joke of the semester.


2) OT’s heart PTs. For Valentine’s Day our classmates made anatomy and neuroanatomy valentines for the physical therapy students. We all took neuro together, so it was an excellent opportunity to get to know their class better. Between pinterest and my creative classmates, we had some amazing cards, such as “you make my heart go tachy”, “ PT= pretty terrific!”, and “You can manipulate me any time!”. I think it’s safe to say, it was a good icebreaker.


1) Finishing neuroanatomy! Neuro is a challenging class. I know for some science buffs it may not have been too tough, but for this humanities gal I initially struggled. Fortunately, I was able to figure out the class and learned so much. It’s bittersweet to be done. I’m not sad to see the Saturday morning study groups disappear, or late night lab reviews end, but it’s another phase of OT school that is over. It’s another check in a box that feels like it went by so quickly. I honestly am still in denial that it’s over. I’m STILL dreaming about the spinothalamic tract (WTF, right??)


Either way, OT school is awesome. Stay tuned to hear about summer classes.


Liza