Induction Ceremony - warmly welcomed

Two really nice things happened last week: I got to know my fellow students a little better and I was inducted into the Physical Therapy profession.

In class last week all 26 PT students had to teach something for 10 minutes that was meaningful and not related to Physical Therapy. It felt like a "show and tell" session. I was taught: how to make fry bread and tortillas, how to replace break drums, how to draw an elephant and make an elephant noise, how to hold and take care of box turtles, how to fly fish, how to make beer (including samples!!! - and no worries it was after 10am), a lesson on the history of tea, how to DJ a radio show, how to use jujitsu, how to set up a river rafting trip, how to train a dog for search and rescue, how to swing dance, break dance and line dance, some useful tricks with the English language, the five throws in basketball; and me, I taught everyone how to find fossils in New Mexico. Specifically, I taught my class how to find dinosaur bones from the Jurassic Morrison formation and ammonites from the Cretaceous Mancos formation. I actually borrowed some spectacular specimens from the Geology Department.

Then, last Friday was my official welcome into the Physical Therapy profession. It was a lovely ceremony that was attended by the entire PT department including all the professors and all three classes and their families. Each class read an oath that promised to serve the PT profession competently and honestly and we were gifted with a tool of the profession - gait belts. My two sweeties, Stephen and Emily, and my best friend, Carla were at my induction and they got to meet my fellow students and teachers. I have never heard of an induction ceremony for students but, I think it is a terrific idea, welcoming beginners into a healing profession.

I sure like this softer and warmer side of science.

Grateful Habit

I completed the first month of school. It has been said that if you do something new for 30 days it can become a habit because it start to feel comfortable. Yes, school feels pretty comfortable to me now.

Being the class prez is still a little bit odd. But, I do know how to communicate, organize and motivate folks to circle the wagons. My main job (as it have been explained to me) will be to get the class to raise money to help the upper class with graduation fees, have fun, team build and outreach to the community. Luckily everyone in the class is "on board" to help me! Our first events are a Happy Hour and helping our fellow PT-student couple move into their new house.

My course work is considered review. I will be diving into the deep challenging work of learning anatomy and orthopedics in just a few weeks. But, my problem is that I haven't had a lot of these review courses such as: Pharmacology, Biomechanics, Kinesiology and Biochemistry. I am scrambling to get the gist of it all. Pharmacology is really interesting and I am having lots of ah-ha moments. I am wishing I had paid more attention 25 years ago in my physics courses for Biomechanics and Kinesiology (oh well). Biochemistry is rather mysterious with all those drawings of circular molecular structures that have rather limited elemental compounds - C, N, O, H and sometimes P.

I am feeling a little bit muddled with it all and hoping that somehow the patterns and connections will emerge before midterms in October, but it is still really wonderful to be in the classroom and at the university. I am so grateful for this experience and opportunity to just be in this life learning new habits.

A Group of Normal Folks

It is nice to be around like-minded people. It makes me feel normal, which of course is an illusion. I have come to understand that there is no such thing as "normal" - like normal childhood, normal job, normal lovership, normal family or normal life. But, it is nice to feel that way when I am amongst my peers in school.

All my classmates are good students (26 of us picked from about 300 applicants), we all have a strong sense of service to others and are geeky anatomy nerds who can't wait to get into the lab and start learning the body's structure and inner workings. But what I really am liking about my classmates is their genuine concern about feelings and everyone strives to let each other know that they are appreciated. In the three weeks I have been in school I have gotten little e-messages from my classmates like: "so glad you are in my class", "you are really great", "thank you for being here", "i really appreciate you" and "thanks for being part of our team".

We 26 students are going to be together as a unit until the end of our graduate program and everyone is getting to know each other and create a tight network of support. I find it be unique in my life but, it sure feels normal to me.

Oh and by-the-way, I was voted as class president.

A Good Start

My first full week of graduate school was not bad at all, in fact it was good.

Anyone that has ever worked with me knows I love those human resource group activities where the whole engineering department maps out their personalities, work styles or some other profile on a grid. It gave me a much better understanding of my non-verbal co-workers. Usually management got everyone to do these "team building exercises" just as the working group was about to implode from stress. In the engineering world I mapped out on these grids as an anomaly, the statistical flyer in the data average. Explaining why relative strangers would say to me when I told them what I did for work: "Really? You don't seem like an engineer." Happily, not so in the PT-student world!

While I am the ripest tomato in the box, I am not the only tomato in the box! As a class of 26 we mapped our learning styles. There are four styles: Doing, Experiencing, Thinking and Reflecting. We all use these four styles at some time in our learning process but, we tend to rely more heavily on one style over the other three. I map into the "Doing" category (I know, I know this is completely shocking) and so do 7 other people! Heh-heh, I am not an asymptotic statistical data point in the PT population.

The best part of this teambuilding exercise was that we presented our learning style to the rest of the class. In 15 minutes, the "Doers" (that's my group!) put together a power point presentation and two skits. I love my creative, risk-taking, doer group!

So in my first week I did a team building exercise straight up and I realized I am not the statistical odd ball in the group - pretty darn good first week.

First Impressions

I worked in a competitive high paced corporate job for 15 years before I decided to return to school. The corporate environment was very structured, organized and plain - like a prison. The last company I worked for had crazy sayings to motivate employees such as: "stress is a good thing", "there are no second priorities" and "only the paranoid survive" .

Today, the first day of school, the program director told us that we are not in competition with each other and that we should each make an effort to help each other succeed. We are told that stress is deleterious to our health so we need to make time to have some regular fun. In addition, one of my professors said he felt like the new PT classroom was too drab and we might be uninspired by our surroundings. He would like for us to come up with decorating ideas for our new classroom so that we feel inspired in the classroom.

I feel like I landed in just the right spot.

Pre-flight checklist

I am a planner. I like to make plans, review plans, stick-to-the-plan and execute the plan.

I have been planning an adventure of sorts since the summer of 2007 when I was a miserable semiconductor engineer working for the even more miserable Intel corporation. The adventure starts with PT School on Monday, August 24, 2009.

However, I really needed to get my life in order so that I could spend three years in school. Thus the pre-flight checklist included making sure both of my kids (Stephen & Emily) will be out of high school and enrolled in college. And, that I had enough space between my semiconductor career and new PT career that I didn't feel burnt out and unable to focus. So I quit my very lucrative engineering career on Leap Day 2008 (auspicious and unplanned!) and spent the last 18 months enjoying time with my teenage children, teaching yoga and traveling a little bit. I took the family to Paris, I taught an yoga and ayurveda workshop in Sweden, I spent 10 days checking out Hawaii as a place to do PT clinicals and I organized my garage.

Right now at 49.5 years of age I am ready to launch myself into this new career, this whole new life. I am so looking forward to the adventure.