Musings of an unconventional OT student

  I was lucky enough to listen to some beautiful minds this past Thursday. And they indeed inspired me. Not by overcoming some massive challenge publicly, not by being famous, not be telling the world how amazing they are, but simply by being themselves. And I find this even more inspiring than some famous persons quote about “overcoming their struggle to enter Hollywood.” A lot of things have lost meaning for me, such as songs and movies, after hearing the background story behind it. For example, Fight song by Rachel Platten used to be so inspiring… Until I realised that this song was about her struggle to fame… What about people’s struggles just to be able to participate in daily life? People who help others participate in daily life? These are the struggle stories I want to hear, watch and listen to.  And this is what I had the absolute privilege to do on Thursday. We had 5 people come speak to us with regards to different intellectual and developmental conditions....

Self-introspection is an ongoing, thoughtful, soul seeking and self-aware process that should take place all the time. I saw a quote that said “the problem with self-introspection is that it never ends” and I couldn’t agree more. Underlying motives, behaviours, emotions and communications that effect the way we see things and react towards them. Self-introspection really requires you to sit down and think of what you have done, why you have done it, and what could you have done differently. Sort of like a client session overview on yourself. It can become a rather strenuous process when your motives are generally to just get through the day with some of your sanity intact. Which is pretty much how this whole semester has been. I actually took the last week to seek some guidance on how to manage with the demands and strain that I have been taking since round about March. This time at home and speaking to family members and medical professionals has left a lot of thoughts roaming a...

Yet another week has gone by, and that means another blog topic to write. This week’s blog topic was about casual day and what it meant to me both personally and professionally. As always, with these personal topics, an internal struggle begins with whether or not I should be honest or say what I think my lecturers want to hear. As we have already discovered in my previous blogs, sugar coating my experiences is NOT my thing. So here goes the honesty. But first, a bit of background on what casual day actually is. Every year, the national council of and for persons with disabilities (NCPD) run casual day for the past 25 years. It is the leading fundraising and awareness campaign for people with disabilities in South Africa. It allows the public to make a R10 contribution in the form of buying a sticker that will be worn on the selected day. This year, that day was September 6 th and the theme was “time to shine with persons with disabilities.” As an Occupational Therapist, this da...

I know, I know. You think someone else decided to write this blog because there is no way the same person who wrote the previous 3 blogs can believe in happy endings. An in all fairness, my state of mind is pretty much doom and gloom 90% of the time. But today, it seems the writing of my blog has fallen into that 10% of feeling at peace and possibly even a bit happy. Unusual, I know. Especially considering this week’s topic. This week’s topic required us to watch a film about mental illness and critique it. This made me want to chew off my wrists because I am in the middle of one of the busiest times in the semester with tests, assignments and practical’s. WHERE ON EARTH DO I FIND THE TIME TO WATCH A MOVIE? Then came the question of what movie I should watch, then came the absolute despair that I don’t want to watch a movie because I could be napping in that time. As I’m writing this blog, you can gather that I did find the time and actually enjoyed the reprieve from studying, ty...