I haven’t updated my blog in…….oh god almost two years I think??? Anyways, I had a homework assignment over the weekend for graduate school to reflect where I want my career to be and the kind of occupational therapy practitioner I want to be. I wrote mostly on my past, what brought me here and how little I know about my own future. I have spent a lot of my life worrying about what I expect and want out of my life. To the point where if I were asked at any other point in my life, I could give you my entire legacy planned out up until my own cause of death. Over the past year, I have found myself in a position of unknown possibilities about life. And I love it, but admittedly, it would have likely sent me into an anxiety ridden coma just a few years ago.

I used that reflection to write said homework assignment I brought up earlier. I added a little more, but, it felt like a strong enough story of me I’d like to put here.

Here it is, and for whoever is reading, I hope you enjoy the insight to me:

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When I had finalized my decision of wanting to become an occupational therapist, I was fully convinced pediatrics was where I belonged. I mulled over this decision since I was fourteen. Freshman year of high school I took sports medicine which solidified in my mind I would get into a direct-entry physical therapy program and become a pediatric physical therapist. When life happened in the way it tends to, and found myself entering into occupational therapy, I believed that I was doing it for more pediatrics opportunities. However, with the zeal I developed for the career my mindset has changed dramatically. While my perspective of where my career would go has shifted during my time at DePaul, the parts of myself that got me here haven’t changed one bit.

In truth, I believe I was so headset on pediatrics as that was the only way I had explored occupational therapy. My shadowing hours were at an outpatient pediatric clinic and my semester off between undergraduate and beginning at DePaul I worked for a therapeutic day school. Even as a child, I looked forward to growing up to take care of other children. Some of my earliest memories include being irritated that I was learning to swim, not one of the lifeguards teaching the kids, wishing to be the mentor not the mentee. Being on the younger side of my cohort, I’ve started to recognize that mindset came from only seeing mentor relationships between children, not adults. The desire from childhood  to be the mentor was how I knew the connection with a patient is what called me to the field. I still love the vibrancy of children’s personalities. However, I also love the sharpness of a developed mind. Even though I felt strong relationships with the kids from shadowing. I don’t know if it’s really the kind of fulfillment I’m looking for professionally.

I didn’t feel a shift in my interest until I took my foundations of occupational therapy class. I learned for the first time how sexual activity is classified as an activity of daily living. As I’ve mentioned a few times, my mother is a romance author. My moms career got me extremely comfortable with people tossing their sex related questions my way, well before I had any romantic experience under my own belt. In 8th grade I was once sent to school with sugar cookies of a rippled six-pack and a kilt to hand out for promotion for my classmates to give to their mothers. After this forsaken day, I became the oracle to all other pimple-faced preteens who took that as a sign of my vast intelligence on the topic (which was equivalent to a buzzfeed article). Between how often does your tampon leak, to do girls also grow butthole hair, I was the classrooms not so incognito google. I mention this to lay out a decade of experience in “privacy” conversations. Roughly two years later, during sophomore year of high school, I shadowed at an outpatient pt clinic. One patient was an older woman post hip surgery who gushed to me about her excitement to have sex with her husband on New Years Eve for the first time in years. I begrudgingly admit, at the time, I thought of that as “funny” and never pursued the conversation. I think now of the missed opportunities to discuss if it was before or after her hip pain began, what is her relationship like, is there something special about that day, and countless more. Being in OT, I see occupations as a moment to know that person. There’s so much I do care for in the environment and in occupation, but for me, those are always changing and controllable to some degree. However, a person is not. I cannot change a person’s core identity. It is because of that, I feel the need to know my future patients on a level so intimate when other professionals may not.

Fast forwarding to undergrad, and despite being around new people with new experiences, I still somehow remained the oracle of sexual activity to my peers. Some of that was partially due to the queer relationship I was in at the time, mostly it was due to my excitement to accept the conversation. I’d receive flippant opinions from my sorority sisters comparing their boyfriends to my girlfriend, and I’d respond with astute observations around their relationships. I loved learning what weird things their partners would do to irritate them versus what things they secretly loved but would never admit. I found ways to develop deeper relationships with those around me by ripping off a societal band-aid that made sex feel like a forbidden topic. Many times in undergrad I posted on my website about perspectives I had around those who held prejudice against “sexual immoralities”. I wrote strongly opinionated perspectives as a woman who has fluctuated her own sexual labels that boring sex doesn’t make it better sex. That pushing your agenda for how one’s bedroom life should be, only creates more division. I still hold firm to the belief that if sex is a topic one finds uncomfortable, then it is a topic they should pursue more knowledge on. Which is why, when the term sexual activity was displayed in my OTPF-4, I found an urge to cling to the topic.

Weirdly, I think part of me always had a professional interest in people’s personal business. I am a lover of stories, people, and above all, passion. In the past, I used to so tightly outline my future. I believed I had to be in a direct entry PT program, I needed to have my t’s crossed and my i’s all dotted. That when I internally combusted on self-imposed stress, I had wanting to work with kids to fall back on. Letting go of that to fully embrace not narrowing myself down to one population for the rest of my life means inviting in a future I don’t know. I’m not certain where I’ll start post fieldwork and the NBCOT. What I am certain of is that I’ll be me. I’ll be eager and earnest Aishtyn. I’ll invite in a person’s story. I want every occupational profile I build to include the deep challenges, difficult days, and tremendous loves of the person they’re on. I hope people know me for that passion. Even in disagreements, I push to fight just a little to get more passion going. While I could certainly adjust better when to set that tone, I find discomfort to be something I have to embrace. To really love occupational therapy, for me, is to really love all the sides that come with people.