This post is at least 7 weeks late, but probably more than that considering I registered this domain in the fall of last year just after I received my acceptance to the Cal State Dominguez Hills Masters of Science in Occupational Therapy degree program. Initially I hit a couple of silly technical snags in the early stages of setting up this site which caused me to lose some momentum but the truth is that I underestimated the workload of OT school. After realizing this, I had to reprioritize how I spend my time and creating this site fell by the way side. That said, I am more inspired than ever to be starting out on my journey along the path to become an OT practitioner and I’ve been capturing snippets of thoughts and things I wanted to share over the past couple of months. Please bear with me as I catch up!
In the back of my mind I was telling myself I would revisit this project when I had time to “come up for air.” It’s now clear to me that I’m not going to have that time for the next two and a half years while I complete this program. At the moment, I’m supposed to be studying for a midterm, prepping for a group meeting for an assignment due tomorrow along with reading several chapters and watching multiple hours of asynchronous lectures. There is simply not going to be a time where I feel like I’m fully on top of everything and I’m starting to accept that and get more comfortable with prioritizing deadlines across my 7 classes. Ok so now that I have supplied the excuses to myself, this is the part where I explain my intentions…I hope this can be a place where I can both solidify my learnings from class as well as discuss Occupational Therapy in more of a macro context and for now, I see this website as sort of a portal between what I’m learning in the vacuum of the classroom and the outside world. I actually have some larger ideas for this space but this is a good start.
Last week I gave a presentation on the Eleanor Clarke Slagle Lecturers from 1955-1959. The lecture series was established by AOTA in 1954 to honor Slagle who was a social worker herself but was an early pioneer in the field and considered to be one of the founders of the profession. This first batch of winners included some heavy hitters such as Margaret S. Rood, MS, OTR, PT who was not only an OTR but a practicing PT as well. Rood founded the first USC OT program and also created Rood’s Approach which is a sensorimotor framework still relevant to neurorehab today. One of the themes which emerged from these early lectures was the importance the lecturers placed on creating a positive learning environment where students feels totally safe to make mistakes or even fail. This idea resonated with me and this concept is foundational to startup culture and the tech world where I started my career before deciding to transition to OT. June Sokolov’s lecture titled “Therapist Into Administrator: Ten Inspiring Years” highlights her concept of the Art of Administration (as opposed to the science). One of the tenants Sokolov touts is embracing ‘courageous errors’ which represent essentially what we would call “honest mistakes” today but the idea of embracing mistakes in a clinical context is not exactly intuitive. As I continued to read the lecture, I realized the real reason why I had not yet published my first post was mostly due to my fear of being somehow wrong. It’s hard to overstate how toxic this sort of fear based thinking is and how important it is to break these negative thought patterns which can be so pervasive. In case it’s not already obvious, I love quotes and try to use them to reinforce important ideas. One of my favorites which I had forgotten apparently, is “Real artists ship!” which is attributed to Steve Jobs after Apple released the Macintosh in the early 1980’s. It is with this spirit that I set out to enter the broader discussion of Occupational Therapy, not confined by a classroom, a particular assignment or a style guide. I accept that I will probably get things wrong from time to time but I cannot be paralyzed by this fear, rather I should be assured by my intentions and my commitment to learning and growing as part of the process.