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...

This week’s blog is going to be about me reflecting on my assessment and treatment skills in psychosocial block thus far. It has been approximately 3 weeks of prac and I have had the chance to assess and treat 2 patients in that time. I have noticed difficulties in both these aspects, especially in the psychosocial setting as treating a mental illness is very abstract. It can’t be seen or touched so a lot of assessment findings are observation based and there needs to be a certain degree of patient participation to be able to do assessments. This is particularly difficult with mentally ill patients due to the lack of insight, or in other words, them believing they do not have a mental illness. Obviously people who think they have no mental illness don’t understand why they are in hospital, don’t want to take medication that stabilises them and often don’t want to work with the OT or any therapist because they think it is a waste of time. Herein lies the challenge of assessment an...

As with every occupation, there comes lessons that need to be learnt, exams that need to written and practical’s that need to be attended and assessed. But before all this can happen, you need to learn the content, memorise it until it becomes knowledge that you can access at any point of the day. As an OT student, most of this knowledge comes about through practice, but another part comes largely through expanding on the notes given in class by reading. Reading textbooks, reading articles, just READING. To say I enjoy this aspect would be a complete lie. Reading, yes, reading articles… not so much. So with today’s topic of critiquing an article that has added value to my OT journey, I really needed to search. Do I look for something knowledge based or emotion based? Something clinical or something motivational? Instead I found some more meaning to add to my OT journey and possibly even a new passion. As I have come through the last 2 and a half years, I have become quite s...

I know. What a way to start the first blog for third year psychosocial block. How am I already tired and it’s only been 4 weeks and 2 practical days? Let’s just say that this psychosocial practical block has brought back a lot of suppressed problems and insecurities form last semester’s physical prac, as well as come with its own new challenges that has caused some upset in my very fragile, easily unbalanced psyche.   I lost a lot of self-confidence during the course of last semester’s physical practical. As you can imagine, after spending nearly 2 and a half years in a degree, to then be told you don’t have the skills to be an OT, can really have an enormous impact on your self-confidence. It makes you question all your decisions, your ability and worth as a student therapist, and in my case, contemplating a degree change because if I can’t help my clients, what am I doing here? But I made it, so I subconsciously swept all the difficulties and stress, the insecurities and ...