The following is a letter I received from an occupational therapy
student at the University of St. Augustine. The letter was not
written as part of an assignment or required as part of any course
work. I am impressed with this student’s ability to integrate
abstract theoretical constructs into personally relevant meanings.
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OT from the heart: This is what Occupational Therapy is to me.
Do you ever wonder what life is all about? Do you ever struggle with
what your role in life is or will be? Questions like, “Where am I,
and what am I doing here?”, often run through my mind. For the first
time in years I feel that I may have an answer to those ever
lingering truth-seeking questions.
I’ve known my whole life that I wanted to help and serve people in a
way that I could impact someone forever. I believe that there is no
better way to impact someone than to address and serve individuals
specific needs. Occupational therapy will allow me to accomplish
this, to serve people on a level that is at the center of life. This
is where I want to be, the very core of living.
What is an occupation anyway? Occupations are anything in life that
we as humans do to have fun, take care of ourselves, or be
productive. What this translates to in my mind is that anything we do
of meaning is an occupation. As a result, without your occupations,
you have lost all your life’s meaning. An example of an occupation in
my life is exercising because it makes me feel productive and brings
me a high level satisfaction. If I weren’t able to exercise any
longer, then I would have an occupational deficit. As an OT, my goal
would be to empower my client to once again learn how to exercise
either the way, he/she use to or in a new way. Another example of an
occupation would be using the toilet or making a meal which can be
very critical in ones happiness and survival.
I believe that our lives are made of occupations, and without our
occupations we are without life. There have been studies that shown
the fact that infants need the occupation of being cared for by a
caregiver in order to live and grow. To me this demonstrates how we
as humans of all ages have an internal and critical need for our
occupations and without them we are without life.
This is what I meant when I said that Occupational Therapy is at the
core of life. Occupations are life, and there is nothing more real
than that. This is the beauty of Occupational Therapy, the capability
to help enable people to restore their occupations which restores
their lives. Occupational therapy addresses people lives
(occupations) when other health care professionals only look at the
physiological or physical body. What does this mean to you? In my
life, it means I may have found an answer to the questions I posed in
paragraph one. It means that I have the ability to empower
occupations and essentially empower life, and that is what its all
about.
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