Journey To Occupational Therapy

My journey towards becoming an occupational therapist began in February 2013 after I returned home from two years of traveling the world. Whilst traveling I was working as a massage therapist and in the back of my mind I always knew I would return home and progress in to the field of physiotherapy; more specifically I wanted to enter the area of rehabilitation. During extensive research in to college courses I came across Occupational Therapy and immediately it struck a cord. I was drawn to the way it takes the whole person in to consideration in its treatment of patients rather trying to fix the superficial problem.

My first step was to find out more about the area of OT before I took on the full time four year course and I wanted to do this in a practical setting rather than reading about it online. Getting work experience was no easy feat. For insurance reasons many OT's were unable to offer work experience or to allow me to shadow them during work hours. This is when I stumbled upon an internship programme in Auckland, New Zealand; http://www.travellersworldwide.com. It cost me a considerable amount of money and was a massive gamble to travel so far just to find out if OT was for me, but I love to travel and I vowed to embrace the experience regardless of how the internship turned out. I'm happy to say it was a success in more ways than one. I met some truly amazing woman who made my time in New Zealand so special and the volunteer program was a huge eye opener to really understanding what an occupational therapist does on a daily basis. 
Arriving home I began the long and torturous process of filling out application forms, applications for grants and writing my personal statement. Upon receiving positive feedback regarding my personal statement I was then invited to interview. I was one of 65 people interviewing for one of five places. Determination and preparation paid off and I received news that I had been accepted! I was elated and thrilled to be taking on the challenge. I'm now three months in to the course, and while there have been moments when I've questioned why I'm back in college at 30 years of age I know that I'm heading in the right direction 👍😊💝🎓