The Memory Unit OT

I’ve heard lots of stories from lots of different OTs, and mine feels (in ways) very similar to so many others.

Occupational Therapy was not my first career choice.

Not because I didn’t want to be an OT, but because I really didn’t know what it was.

For the entirety of my high school career, I want to be a preschool teacher.

I got a part-time job at an early learning center when I was 16. I enrolled in a vocational high school for my junior and senior years that had an Early Childhood Education program. I joined the FEA (Future Educators Academy) as a high school extracurricular. I slowly accumulated a portfolio of projects and curriculum to eventually use as a teacher. And after graduation, I enrolled directly into an Early Childhood Education associates degree program at a community college near our home.

I was heart set on teaching preschoolers for the entirety of my career.

Shortly after starting my freshman year of college, I took on a second part-time job as a home health aid for a family friend through our church. Their adult daughter required assistance with her basic routine, and they wanted to hire people they knew and trusted rather than strangers through an agency.

Now, maybe it was going to school part-time and holding down two part-time jobs, but I was overwhelmed.

I was getting burnt out and frustrated with my job at the Early Learning Center, and my college courses really didn’t excite me. (And here’s the thing about the community colleges in our area: when you enroll in a specific degree program rather than a Gen. Ed. program, they start you right into degree-specific courses your first semester).

But I felt like I was experiencing a complex. I didn’t feel like early education as the right fit for me anymore, but I really didn’t know what was. So I carried on in the program.

That first spring semester, I was in a course focused on teaching students in Special Education programs. There was a particular assignment in which I was supposed to shadow a public school teacher who had special education students in their classroom.

Well, I absolutely cheated on that assignment.

It was just too difficult to find a teacher who was willing and available during the middle of the spring semester. Fortunately, my Dad had a colleague at the time whose wife worked in our local elementary school as a speech therapist. So I shadowed her for the week.

She worked closely with an occupational therapist, so it was really a two-for-one shadowing experience. And it was hear that I discovered there was another route to take when working with children. I could still work in a school or early learning setting, but with a greater focus on individualized care.

Now, here’s the beauty of how God has worked in my life.

There were a ton of things in play at one. I was working as a home health aid (basically doing occupational tasks without knowing it). I had just shadowed an occupational therapist in the school system and truly discovered what OT could look like. Then I enrolled in a summer gen. ed. course, during which another student told me about her experiences in the Occupational Therapy program at Husson University.

The more I researched, and the more I branched out into medical-related general education courses (like anatomy, medical terminology, and psychology), I realized that Occupational Therapy was the profession for me.

I applied to two different occupational therapy programs: one just over the border in Massachusetts (which I planned to commute to if I was accepted), and one in Bangor, Maine (the same school that that classmate in the summer course was attending).

I was only accepted at one school.

I transferred to Husson University the fall of 2013, graduated with my B.S. in Healthcare Studies in 2016, and my M.S. in Occupational Therapy in 2017.

Husson University was absolutely the best fit for me, and I’m planning to share more about that with you later this week.

So that’s it. Occupational Therapy found me, in a sense. And it’s really be the perfect profession for me, even though the systems in place have their ups and downs.

There’s so much versatility to it, and even if I eventually took another job, I don’t think that “occupational therapist brain” will ever leave me.