Tufts University School of Arts and Sciences 2019 Memory Book
Past TJ Pinto, OTD '24
When I was in high school, I was known as the dental guy. I attended a vocational-technical high school where I took the typical courses that are offered at nearly loftier schools, like math, science, history, and English, however, I also had the opportunity to take dental profitable courses, fifty-fifty condign certified in dental radiology when I was xvi. Throughout high schoolhouse, I had competed at the national level in Dental Scientific discipline competitions through an arrangement called HOSA Future Health Professionals, even medaling in the superlative 3 in the nation two times. A fire had ignited deep within me. I was going to be a dentist, and no one could tell me otherwise.
Fast forrad a few years and I was pursuing my undergraduate caste at the Academy of Delaware with a concentration in pre-dentistry. Amongst other prerequisite courses, I retrieve sitting in my Organic Chemistry class and constantly thinking, "This is not for me," though I kept moving frontwards, nonetheless. At this point, I had convinced myself that I would exist better off suffering through numerous dental school prerequisites that I was not passionate almost rather than giving up on the career that I had been interested in since I was in the 6th grade. The thought of having to start over and notice a new career path was merely too daunting for me to even fathom, still I couldn't assistance but observe that the fire within me was slowly dimming.
In the Fall of 2017, this fear suddenly felt insignificant, after a tragic event occurred back at dwelling house, feeling similar my globe had stopped completely while the rest of the world continued to wing past me. As a result of this tragedy, my mom was critically injured, ultimately having to receive intense physical and occupational therapy. I watched her go from being intubated in the ICU to using a walker around the house to at present existence fully contained and working as a nurse over again. My mom's strength was truly undeniable. Her resilience inspired me and the piece of work that her therapists did to help her to heal both physically and mentally opened my optics to a new field of careers. Past the winter of 2019, but months before graduating from undergrad, I decided to shift my focus to a career in the rehabilitation sciences.
When considering this new field of careers, I initially decided to pursue physical therapy. I had a general idea of what the role of a physical therapist was from accompanying my mom to physical therapy appointments when I was home from higher. When I was younger, I even went to a PT myself for a rotator gage injury. During my final semester of undergrad, I started volunteering for a few hours a calendar week at the University of Delaware Physical Therapy clinic—a clinic run by clinicians and student PTs from the university. Existence able to see patients on a weekly basis and ask questions nearly their treatment excited me. I concluded up even attending a career off-white held by my university for students to find jobs and summertime internships specifically focused on PT. At this off-white, I met numerous representatives from different companies and the modest, welcoming family feel that I received from the Premier Concrete Therapy & Sports Performance team pushed me to hand over my resume. Just around a week or ii later, I had landed a chore working with them every bit an exercise technician start a few days afterwards my graduation in May of 2019.
Working at Premier was such an incredible opportunity for me. I was able to receive hands-on experience working with patients, detect treatments being performed by PTs, and inquire as many questions as my center desired. Though, I slowly found myself gravitating toward the dorsum corner of the clinic, an area where people were constantly talking and laughing, even being referred to as the "fun corner" by my dispensary director on a few occasions. I began speaking with the clinician working in this area, an occupational therapist working in hand therapy as a Certified Hand Therapist (CHT). At this point, I knew virtually goose egg about what an occupational therapist was, but I was interested in learning more.
In August of 2019, I began shadowing Katie, an occupational therapist working in both an outpatient setting and an acute intendance setting. I recollect the very offset patient that I had observed her working with, an individual who had experienced a stroke and was having difficulty performing several of their activities of daily living (ADLs) independently. On this day in particular, Katie was working with them to straighten their arrow finger, which was tightly flexed equally a result of a trigger finger. Katie set up a Jenga tower and played with them, encouraging them to focus on straightening and using that 1 pointer finger specifically. On a different day, this same patient came in and stated that they were unable to buckle their seatbelt without assistance from their partner. Katie then brought us all outside, had the patient get into the passenger seat like they normally would, and then observed them attempting to buckle themselves. She chop-chop noticed that the center console was what was getting in the mode and that once it was flipped up, the patient could fully extend their arrow finger, reach downwardly, and buckle themselves on their ain. Katie made treatment fun, but it still had purpose. She listened to the specific concerns and goals that mattered to her patients and did everything she could to support them and so that they could live their lives to the fullest. After a few sessions of shadowing Katie, the burn inside me that had almost completely extinguished a few years earlier was at present ignited all over once more—fueled past the thought of one day becoming an occupational therapist, providing holistic care and helping people to do the things that matter most to them.
Once I had officially decided that I wanted to go an OT, it was time to start preparing. I decided that I would take a full twelvemonth to end up my remaining prerequisites, gain hours shadowing in multiple settings, and continue to piece of work every bit an exercise technician. In the fall of 2019, I was shadowing in a school-based setting, an outpatient setting, and a hospital while taking 2 classes at a local community college and working throughout the week. While things were overwhelming at times, I loved everything that I was doing and grew to appreciate how my schedule was structured despite having so much going on. In each setting that I was shadowing, I was learning more and more about how the role of the OT is like over-all, but withal noticing specific differences. For case, one morning time I could be in a schoolhouse-based setting observing an OT that was working on pre-writing strokes with younger children and the side by side morning I could be observing an OT helping a post-operative hip replacement patient to acquire how to use adaptive equipment before existence discharged from the hospital. I sometimes envied my friends who had done their observations over the summer during undergrad, not having to worry almost schoolwork, work, and other responsibilities that I had at this fourth dimension. Though simultaneously, I felt like this experience was incredibly valuable, allowing me to take time to really research a field that was new to me, giving me the opportunity to broaden my personal scope of what I understand OT to be.
The chaotic schedule that I had come up to love was promptly interrupted in March of 2020, when the whole world close down considering of the COVID-19 pandemic. I was suddenly furloughed from my job, existence promised that I would be brought back as presently every bit possible, though we all had no idea how long this pandemic would concluding. Suddenly, my decorated days of work, school, and shadowing experiences had turned into monotony. I woke up at 9 or 10 AM each mean solar day, sitting on the couch and doing all my homework inside the kickoff 2 days of the week. For the rest of the week, I mainly merely sat around the house, only leaving for daily bike rides around the neighborhood in an endeavour to keep myself sane. One afternoon, every bit I was looking upward information about different graduate schools, I decided to sign upwards for as many virtual data sessions as possible. I had attended almost 10 in a one-calendar month period, somewhen even having a pre-Zoom routine that I would follow. I would go upstairs nigh xv minutes early, launder my confront and castor my hair, put on a polo or a push button-downward shirt (though I was almost ever wearing shorts or joggers from the waist-down), accommodate the lighting in my room, and and then pull up a principal document that I had created with data virtually every single schoolhouse I was interested in. On May 6th, 2020, I attended the Tufts OTD data session, knowing almost naught most the programme but knowing that it was a strong school overall. I even so remember how friendly and passionate Jill Rocca was, an Admissions Coordinator for the OT department who had attended Tufts for her Mail service-Professional person Masters and her Postal service-Professional Doctorate in OT. When listening to the current students in the program speak about their experiences, they seemed and so happy with their decision to nourish Tufts and seemed to take a lot of support from their classmates and kinesthesia. At the end of this Zoom telephone call, Tufts had risen to the pinnacle of my listing and I was going to exercise everything in my power to endeavour to be in their side by side cohort.
In June of 2020 I was finally chosen dorsum into work, where I gradually went from working 1 or two days a week to working five days a week once I had completed my last prerequisite courses. I was the only exercise technician at the clinic and felt a flake overwhelmed. However, this helped me to work on my fourth dimension management skills, prioritizing tasks, and working on my overall self-intendance earlier, during, and after work. In July, I began to utilise to schools. I was only able to focus on applications in the evenings and on the weekends due to my decorated piece of work schedule. Nonetheless, I was diligent and submitted all my applications by mid-Baronial since I completed my personal statement back in May and reached out to my references in advance.
One time I started to receive interviews, things began to feel and then much more than real and my Zoom coming together routine had now turned into a Zoom interview routine, requiring me to leave work early or come up in late. In November, I had received my credence letter from Tufts and genuinely could not believe information technology—quite literally falling to the floor in atheism when I had received the email. The conversations that I was having with patients at piece of work began to shift from, "I'g preparing to apply to graduate schoolhouse" to "I will be attention graduate schoolhouse," which was such a surreal feeling. Equally my last day of piece of work approached and the reality of moving away for school truly began to sink in, I felt overwhelmed about finding roommates, buying furniture, making sure my financial assist was in place, and so much more—something that I had forgotten well-nigh later being out of schoolhouse for a few years.
Something that I struggled with more than I was expecting was the overall adjustment to beingness a total-time student again. The starting time 6-week summer session of the OTD plan consisted of an OT Foundations course and Gross Anatomy for the get-go half of the summertime, so Neuroanatomy for the second half of the summertime. While I had taken prerequisite courses a full yr prior to this, I could hear the comments of people I had talked to in the past echoing through my head, telling me how hard it would be to get back into school later taking time off. Once the semester began, those voices progressively got louder. I felt lost navigating Gross Anatomy, as this course was so densely compacted with challenging material. I realized that my study strategies from undergrad weren't belongings upwardly very well in graduate schoolhouse and that I would need to adapt quickly. Though it took some trial and error, I eventually decided to make Quizlet flashcards, creating one study set for each lecture and one specific study set up with all the muscles and their attachments, deportment, and nerve innervations. I wrote virtually of my flashcards as questions, creating a practice exam that I could randomize and add images to if I wanted. I also carried around a small whiteboard and markers in my backpack, drawing the brachial plexus, arteries of the upper and lower extremity, and whatever else I needed to see visually over and over. While it was frightening to make these big changes so early in the semester, I feel like information technology was helpful to realize that I am not the exact aforementioned pupil that I was in undergrad. Similarly, the program I am in is very different from my undergrad programme, which ways that changes are to be expected.
Another claiming I faced when get-go grad school was my struggle with the overall transition. In undergrad I experienced homesickness in my first semester, though, after that I began to love college, the people I had met, and the freedom I had. When I started at Tufts, I assumed that information technology wouldn't exist then bad since I had already lived away from habitation before. Nevertheless, after just a few weeks, I apace began to miss my family and my dogs. I was extremely nervous nearly having to meet so many new people in a graduate-level program. I had an overwhelming feeling of imposter syndrome, similar anybody around me was and then intelligent and had such remarkable life experiences, and I was constantly comparing myself to others. The times where I really struggled to get out of my own head or had problem grasping concepts, I turned to the OT faculty. I appreciated their willingness to listen to me and to assist me.
Some of these meetings were more than personal and would range from talking about things I was struggling with in a specific lesson to delving deeper into what is important to me as a educatee and what I want out of my education. Fortunately, equally fourth dimension passed, these negative thoughts began to diminish, and I began pushing myself out of my condolement zone and immersing myself in the many cracking opportunities that are available at Tufts.
In the summer, I mustered upwardly the courage to run for a position inside Tufts' Pupil Occupational Therapy Association (SOTA), and I was elected to the Educatee-Kinesthesia Representative position for my accomplice. I was so excited to have the opportunity to bridge the gap betwixt my cohort and the OT kinesthesia, working to make certain anybody's voices are heard. In the Autumn, when the Accreditation Council for Occupational Therapy Education (ACOTE) was coming for an on-site visit with our program, I was one of the students that was selected to assist represent the students of our plan, which meant a lot to me. Though the most meaningful experiences for me, outside of my educational activity, have been the close relationships I have formed over the months that I accept been here. From the coincidental summer get-togethers with my cohort, to the Almanac Fall BBQ and apple picking events hosted past the Graduate Student Council, to the tight-knit relationships I have made with private classmate's one-on-one. I genuinely feel like I take become a valued member of the Colossal customs, making Tufts feel similar home for me.
Seeing all my hard work pay off, the loud voices of negativity inside my head gradually silencing, and the support I have felt from classmates and faculty have proven that I genuinely deserve to be here. I now view the fourth dimension that spent out of school as a positive. I had time to piece of work out in the real world, make connections, and grow in a style that I may not have been able to do if I had come straight to graduate school from undergrad. Since starting at Tufts, the fire within me continues to roar as my passion for this profession only increases equally I larn. I'g seeing myself grow into the clinician that I had hoped to become.
Source: https://sites.tufts.edu/asegrad/
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