How to Get OT Observation Hours during the COVID-19 Pandemic

Although most states are now easing restrictions related to the COVID-19 pandemic, many prospective OT students are left with few options for ways to gain observation hours. Many medical facilities like hospitals, skilled nursing facilities, and outpatient clinics are suspending volunteer services, strictly limiting visitors, and postponing, shortening, or canceling student placements. Additionally, schools have been closed for months and many OT practitioners have transitioned to telehealth settings with varying degrees of interaction with their students. Community-based settings have also been impacted as home-based providers have had to modify the ways in which they interact with and provide interventions for people in their homes or other communities.

If you’re a prospective occupational therapy (or other allied health profession) student, the situation may seem hopeless. Volunteer positions you lined up in OT clinics may have been canceled, volunteer programs suspended, or shadowing experiences shuttered – and with them your plans for earning the observation hours and experiences required by most programs. Fortunately, all is not lost!

The difficulties created by the COVID-19 pandemic have created a unique opportunity to highlight how your ability to think creatively and overcome unforeseen challenges in order to achieve your goal makes you even more prepared to work as an occupational therapy practitioner who will be doing the same with future clients.

Additionally, many if not all OT programs have modified their admissions requirements for the 2020-21 review cycle that takes into consideration barriers students face to getting observation hours during the pandemic. If you are currently applying to OT programs, it is absolutely crucial that you carefully review each program’s website for the most up-to-date information about program-specific modules/books/etc. that are required in addition to or in lieu of traditional observation hours.

If you are struggling with the loss of opportunities to obtain observation hours but you are still determined to become an OT or OTA, read on to learn how you can use creative avenues to learn about the profession and gain useful insights that will strengthen your applications!

Apply for Editor Position with SPin OT!

Image from Student Perspectives in Occupational Therapy.

Are you interested in helping review and publish the work of OT students across the U.S. and around the world?

Do you have strong writing skills and a desire to promote the profession?

Are you an OT student with at least 6 months left in school?

If you answered YES to these questions, then you should click over to the Student Perspectives in Occupational Therapy (SPin OT) website and apply to become an editor!

SPin OT is an initiative that was created by OT students, for OT students, and they are currently undergoing a leadership transition. They are seeking new team members to review reader submissions and share them on the SPin OT website and Facebook page. Being a part of this organization can help round out your OT student resume, as well as helping refine your professional collaboration and writing skills. It can also be a great way to connect with other OT students from around the country!

If you want to help a growing organization reach out to OT students around the world, consider getting involved with SPin OT! You can read the position description and full application requirements HERE – the deadline is June 30, so act quickly if you’d like to join the team!

Happy Birthday, Blog! :D

Happy birthday to my blog! Today it is officially one year old! (This picture is of the delicious and awesome argyle patterned cake my boyfriend made for me a few years ago. :D)

One year ago, I decided to take a leap and begin writing as an outlet for my passion for occupational therapy, the world’s coolest profession.

Today, I realized that while I originally began writing with the intent to help others, collecting my thoughts about the OT profession here on this blog has also been very helpful and meaningful to me. Through this blog, I’ve gotten the chance to interact with some of the profession’s biggest movers and shakers, provide helpful advice to prospective students, and help advocate for the profession — all while making friends and having fun exploring the important issues facing our profession today.

I’ve also been able to document the personal and professional progress I’ve  from my first weeks in OT school to now, as my first year comes to a close in just a month. It’s been quite the ride, and I thank anyone and everyone who’s reached out to me, retweeted, posted a kind comment, or offered a different perspective in the past year.  Your support is deeply appreciated, and I hope to continue building relationships, exchanging ideas, and making a difference for a long time!

With that, here’s to another year of writing, reflecting, thinking, and growing! I can’t wait to see (and blog about) what this next year brings!

Gotta Get Into Grad School Part III: Planning, Composing and Finalizing Your OT Graduate School Essays

This is the third installment in my Gotta Get Into Grad School series. Read Part I and Part II here!

I love Calvin (and Hobbes!), but his essay-writing approach leaves a lot to be desired. My advice in this post will help you write your best occupational therapy graduate school essay!

Hello again! It’s been a whirlwind of a month since my last “Gotta Get Into Grad School” series post, but I’m back at it again and my topic for this post is the actual essay writing process.

Now, if you’ve been following for a little bit, you might know that I began this series with a post about writing occupational therapy graduate school personal and admissions essays. And so you might be wondering why I would write another post about it, or what will make this one different. To that I say, You’ll see!

…actually, I’ll just tell you. My first post was a very basic overview of the parts I feel that any quality personal essay should have. As a reminder, these parts are the four components of the writing MEAL plan, and they include your Motivation, Experience, Aspirations and Links. And while (in my humble opinion!) this post does a good job of outlining what your final essay should include, it doesn’t give much information about the timeline for writing, the process, the kinds of prompts you might see, and the nitty-gritty information about applying to graduate occupational therapy programs that you come to this blog to find. =D

With this in mind, I set out to write a second post about admissions essays, and this post is different from the first in that it includes much more specific advice about:

• Planning to write your essays
• Deciding what to include
• Editing essays and finalizing your submissions

Additionally, this post includes many more personal anecdotes and thoughtful reflections on my experience that I hope will help you understand more about the challenges of the essay-writing process and help you as you begin, continue or finish up your occupational therapy graduate school essays!

Gotta Get Into Grad School Part I: All of the Best Personal Essays Start with a Good MEAL

Writing personal essays for OT school doesn’t have to be painful!

Throughout my life, I’ve been told that I have strong writing skills. I’ve written hundreds of papers, essays, reports, blog posts and projects both in and outside of academia, and I truly enjoy expressing my thoughts on paper (or online, as the situation demands).

Looking back on the graduate school application process, I realize just how fortunate I was to have had such extensive writing experience and written expression skills that I could use to my advantage. One of the most important parts of all OT school application is the personal essay, and this brief, 500-word or 2000-character document plays a major role in the admissions committee’s decision to admit or reject you from their program.

In the following post, which begins my “Gotta Get Into Grad School” series, I’m going to give you a quick and dirty rundown of the four vital components of a personal essay that will help your application rise to the top of the pile!

The “MEAL Plan” is a common writing strategy I have used and that I have helped former students use as well. The acronym MEAL typically stands for Main Idea – Evidence – Analysis – Link. However, I’ve created a revised version of the MEAL Plan specifically for students who are writing personal essays for graduate programs – especially occupational therapy graduate programs. My version is as follows:

Motivation

Experience

Aspirations

Links