MOT Pre-Advising at BCU, and Whatever It Takes

I went to Big City U (BCU) recently for what they call "pre-advising" for the MOT program.

Despite obsessive planning re: how to get there, which one-way streets to avoid, and where to park, things go badly. It is raining insanely hard as I pull into the parking garage, where I get to pay $6.00 for the privilege of winding my car through narrow aisles with no free parking spaces. I hit the top level (above ground) and realize I am going to have to back all the way back down to the next turn so I can turn around, 'cause this sucker is FULL, when a woman darts out of the stairwell at the very top of the top level and hurries through the downpour to her car. Yay! I take her spot, gather my things, including a handy map of BCU's campus, and dart through the rain to the stairwell. I have fifteen minutes until my appointment. That ought to be enough time.

BCU has skywalks between many of its buildings. It's not far to the Health Sciences building from the garage, according to the map, but the skywalks wind this way and that, and soon I am completely lost. I get an impromptu tour of the Rec Center (the indoor track is ludicrously small), the engineering building, and some other building before I give up and ask a Rec Center worker how to get to the Health Sciences building from here. "It's really easiest if you go outside," she says uncertainly, gesturing to the rain sheeting down.

So I plunge outside into the rain and follow her directions, which seem straightforward enough, but I end up in the Nursing building. Hmm. I run back outside and accost a student with a backpack, getting wetter every second despite my raincoat.

"Excuse me," I call, trying not to sound frantic and pretty much failing, "Where is the Health Sciences building? I know it's right here somewhere!"

He points at a butt-ugly building across the way. "Thanks!" I say, and charge up the steps and into the front doors. It's time for my appointment. I should be introducing myself RIGHT NOW! I am supposed to be making a good impression!

I'm standing in an anonymous lobby. No signs anywhere. The closest doors claim they are for physics classes. What the heck?

There is a couple smooching against the wall. No time for that now! "Sorry to bother you," I intrude breathlessly, not really sorry at all, "but is this the Health Sciences building? I'm supposed to be there two minutes ago!"

The couple looks annoyed, then confused. "This is the science building," the guy finally offers.

A passing faculty/staff-looking woman overhears the exchange and takes pity. "Honey, you see that little gazebo thing?" She points across a concrete quad back across the street, and sure enough, there's something that looks like a small square greenhouse sticking up in the middle. "That stairwell will take you down into the Health Sciences building."

I thank her effusively and take off running. The couple goes back to their smooching. All is right with the world.

At last, I skid into the reception area for the Health Sciences Department, my dripping, bedraggled campus map still dangling limply from one hand. "I'm here for pre-advising?" I say uncertainly, hoping they won't pitch me out on my ear for being five minutes late.

A secretary nods. "Right this way," she says, and shows me into a small conference room. There is an older man at the head of the table, speaking earnestly about the curriculum, and five women spaced around the table listening intently and taking notes. I hurry to the last open spot with a folder in front of it and sit down.

Most of the man's initial comments are things I already know from the website, so I use the time to catch my breath. When he gets to the admissions requirements, I start taking notes. The news is a little jarring. Although only a 3.0 GPA is required for admission, the average GPA of the entering 2011 class, who will graduate in 2013, is a 3.8. After giving 8 spots to BSHS majors in a guaranteed reservation program, there were 22 spots left for everyone else. There were 145 applications for those 22 spots. That's 7 applications for every person admitted. Can you say COMPETITIVE? They have a 100-point scale for ranking applicants. 75 of those points have to do with your grades, and the other 25 points revolve around your essay. He also warns us that the GRE will probably be required within the next 2-3 years, meaning I will have to take it. On the bright side, however, if you can score above the fiftieth percentile in all three areas (writing, verbal, quantitative), they give you a 4.0 GPA for the 15 points that revolve around your "overall academic career" GPA. I am a good test-taker, so I make a note to take the GRE next summer.

He gets to the end of his presentation and says he will now take us one by one to his office to answer any additional questions we have. This is good, because I have a list of 9 questions I printed out and brought with me.

While Woman #1 is with the professor, the rest of us talk. "It's nice to see someone else from the over-25 crowd here," I say with a nod and smile to the one other woman who is clearly not a current undergrad. The woman looks up in surprise. "Oh, no," she says, patting the shoulder of the blonde girl next to her, "I'm just her mother. Here to provide moral support and take notes."

"Oh," I manage politely. "What a wonderful supportive mother you have!" I say to the blonde girl. I don't get to say much more because the professor comes back, and the mom and daughter head out together.

The other two women are both undergrads. One is a PT major and the other is a psych major. I feel a bit out of place with my esoteric background, but we chat pleasantly with each other. They are both freaked out by the high GPA cited ("I don't have that!" "Me either!"). I try to reassure them that their excellent backgrounds will carry them through.

When my turn with the professor finally rolls around, it is already 2:40. I ask my questions, am generally happy with the answers I receive, and manage to make him laugh within the first five minutes. He assures me I get bonus points for that.

I leave with my mind made up: whatever it takes, baby. I am going to do whatever it takes to get into this program. I will take the prerequisites and get them all done (and get As in all of them), even if that means enrolling simultaneously at four or five different schools. (BCU's classes tend to fill up quickly, making it difficult for people to get into them.) I will spend every frickin' dime I have on tuition. I will commute through two feet of snow. I will get a dogsitter to take care of my dogs. I will buy those ridiculous GRE prep books I haven't even looked at or thought about in 20 years. I will ace the GRE. I will pursue shadowing opportunities until every facility in Ohio knows who I am. I will write the most beautiful essay EVAH. And they will let me in because they will see that I am smart and brilliant and hard-working and I WANT THIS MORE THAN ANYONE ELSE APPLYING.

I really, truly want this. OT is what I want to do with the rest of my life, and I am not going to let lists of courses or closed sections or GREs or any other little thing stand in my way. I will do whatever it takes to get this. Period.

Once you've made that decision, everything else is easy.

Encouraging Reactions

I met a colleague (in my current line of work) for lunch the other day, and when she asked how business was and started talking shop, I said, "Well, I've actually decided I'm leaving the profession."

"Really? What are you going to do?"

"I'm going to become an occupational therapist."

Her immediate reaction: "I think you'd be really good at that, actually." It turns out she has a son who needed several years of OT as a child (he is now happily studying to be a teacher). So she knows all about OT and thinks I can do it! How cool is that?

I have told about a dozen people so far, and although my colleagues are shocked (one of them actually said, "I can't imagine the profession without you in it!"), they were all encouraging and thought OT would be a great fit for me.

I'm going to have to tell a lot more people soon. Our annual conference is coming up in a few months, and I submitted three presentation proposals. I actually submitted them before this whole OT thing really got rolling (you have to submit about 7 months prior to the conference date!). However, I have decided that I just can't justify spending $1000+ and missing 2-3 days worth of classes to go to a conference in a field I am planning to exit. It kills me not to go--I was first at this conference in 1995 and have gone almost every year since. I LOVE the people in my field. They are smart, articulate, funny, and endlessly interesting. And getting together with people I only e-mail or call the rest of the year is indescribably wonderful. But you have to let go of the old to make room for the new.

The OOTA (Ohio Occupational Therapy Association) is having its annual conference in October. Guess where I will be going instead? The best part is that the conference is within easy driving distance, so I won't have to pony up for an expensive hotel room.

The Maddening World of Prereqs

One of the first things I did after deciding to pursue OT was look at the national professional association's website. In the United States, occupational therapists are represented by a 40,000-member group called the American Occupational Therapy Association, or AOTA for short. The website has some good information under the "Students"/Prospective Students tab, including a list of schools offering degrees in OT in the United States.

There is a university about an hour away from where I live that offers a master's in occupational therapy (MOT, although I've also seen it abbreviated as MSOT). I'll call this university BCU, or Big City University. Unfortunately, a college that is very close by, an easy commute, does NOT offer an MOT. I'll call them Local College (LC).

In 2007, the entry-level degree for occupational therapy changed from a bachelor's to a master's degree. So a master's degree is the minimum qualification needed to work as an OT. Most schools do not have a formal pre-OT bachelor's track. People can get a bachelor's in whatever they like and then apply to OT school. However, to ensure a candidate has at least the basic knowledge necessary to do well in a master's program, MOT programs require people to have completed certain undergraduate courses before applying. These courses are commonly known as prerequisites.

Are you with me so far? Good. 'Cause here's where it starts to get a little flaky. Each school requires its own unique set of prerequisite classes. So the set of courses you take to apply to School A may not work at all for School B. There is no standardized set of prerequisites (prereqs). THIS IS ANNOYING.

Now, to really mess things up, these prerequisites are often upper-division (junior/senior) classes. You can't just waltz in off the street and say "Hey, sign me up for Abnormal Psychology. It's one of my prereqs." You can't take Abnormal Psychology until you've taken Intro to Psychology. I suppose that's understandable if you're 18 and don't know diddily about anything, but let's get real--are you really going to fail Abnormal if you haven't had Intro?

Tune in next time for more on prereqs, prereq-prereqs, and other tidbits of insanity!

The Road to OTR: The On-Ramp, or How This Whole Mess Started

I'm not sure exactly when it happened. For a long time, I loved my job. It generally involved sitting in front of a computer screen in a home office and typing all day, but I got to use my gray matter, learn new things, and most importantly, point out the window with a Nelson Muntz-like "HA ha!" when the snow was coming down fast and furious and everyone else had to drive to work in it.

I should have realized something was up when I tore my adductor last year and couldn't even sit in front of the computer for days--and didn't miss it at all. I ended up working reduced hours all summer. I should have been concerned about the hit to my income, if nothing else, but I just couldn't muster the energy.

Fall rolled around, and I went to my professional organization's annual conference, just as I have for the last 15 years. It's my favorite week of the whole year, hands down. I presented, as I have for the last 5 or 6 years in a row, and thoroughly enjoyed being around 1000+ colleagues. There's a wonderful energy there that always seems to motivate me for the year to come.

But this year, the effect wore off after just a few days back in my isolated home office. I struggled on, knowing something was wrong, wanting to take my life in a new direction, but not knowing what direction that was. I felt burned out and joyless. Even a big December snowstorm failed to cheer me up.

And then came The Diaphragm Pull. It was February, and I was coughing hard enough to make the walls rattle and the floors shake for over a week due to a sinus infection. Apparently I managed to pull my diaphragm, which expressed its displeasure by spasming and subjecting me to the most excruciating pain I have ever felt (and I've had migraines since I was a kid, so that's really saying something). The PA I saw suggested massage therapy since my back was "one giant knot." It required five visits to an LMT to untangle, so the massage therapist and I got pretty chatty with each other.

"You remind me so much of my sister-in-law," he said one day, and then added hastily off my alarmed look: "No, I like my sister-in-law!" I asked what she did for a living, and he said she was a marriage and family therapist. I said I was thinking about switching careers myself and had considered something along that line. When I got home, I looked it up on the Bureau of Labor Statistics website. It sounded pretty good, but the first entry under "Related Occupations" caught my eye: Occupational Therapist. I clicked on it. The clouds parted and I may have heard faint harp music. Working with people? Talking to them, listening to them? And using my creativity and problem-solving abilities to help them learn or re-learn how to do the things that mattered most to them? While getting paid good money and enjoying abundant job opportunities? DING! It sounded almost too good to be true. I spent the rest of the afternoon glued to the computer, reading everything I could find about occupational therapy (usually referred to as OT for short), and when my husband got home from work that night, I announced, "I think I've found my new career!"

That day was quite literally the beginning of the road to OTR for me. I'll pick up from there on my next entry. I probably won't post every day, but hope to get in at least 2-3 entries a week.