Origin of an OT

Tourette Does the Talking: Thomas White at TEDxUND Thomas White is a student at the University of Notre Dame, who has been diagnosed with Tourette's  syndrome. Thomas describes this as "a neurological disorder characterized by motor and vocal tics that last for more than one year". Throughout the TED Talk, Thomas describes his normal day, explaining the outburst and unwarranted disturbances he is faced with. Regardless of his disability he is able to complete a 12 minute speech with very few disruptions, ultimately relaying the message that we are all people with flaws, but if we can accept that, we can also have hope. I chose this video because I always find TED Talks to be very inspirational. Knowing the difficulties Tourette's can provide while trying to communicate, I was very interested to see what Thomas would have to say and how he would go about saying it. I strongly recommend watching the speech, because he was amazing. To have such poise when under that...

When I was an OT intern at a geriatrics facility in Ghent, Belgium, I had no idea what I was doing. This was the equivalent of a graduate level II internship. At this time I was only a junior in undergrad. There may have been a miscommunication about the level of qualifications between Americans and Europeans. Regardless I tried to learn as much as I could. I mainly just watched the OTs do certain exercises with clients and tried to mimic those activities. At the end of the internship I had my own clients, and taught them how to use wheelchairs and assisted them with their walking therapy. I wish I could go back and redo that internship now that I have even a baseline understanding of those clients' disabilities and therapies. There are so many things I learned from that internship, but I know I would have learned so much more if I knew what to look for while I was there.

Something I learned from the online class material was what Assistive Technology (AT) is. I already had a slight understanding of what AT is (we’ve all seen the Apple commercial), instead I should say I learned more about what AT is.  Something interesting I learned about it was the levels of AT. What I thought was AT turns out to just be high tech AT. There are actually three level of AT: low tech, medium tech, and high tech. These levels go from things that are easy to make or obtain, low in cost and difficulty to use, and amount of training needed, to more expensive and require more training for use, as you go up from low tech to high tech. I wouldn’t think that a pencil grip was necessarily AT when you compare it to an iPad, but it makes a lot more sense that one is considered low tech and the other high tech. I also learned about some of the other myths about AT. It can be used for all ages, and all variations of disabilities. AT can be different for anyone who u...