After Athletic Career is Over
She envisioned her straight line career path while still in high school but it turned out she would need to take some risks to revise her path as her circumstances changed.
FAMILY BACKGROUND
DM was one of three children; the only girl, born between brothers. Her father was in the security equipment business, initially as an employee installing monitored home security and fire alarm systems before he opened his own similar business. Her mother worked outside the home as a kidney dialysis technician.
CHILDHOOD THOUGHTS OF AN ADULT CAREER
DM played competitive sports throughout her school years, focusing on diving to the extent that she participated in “Junior Olympic” training. However, DM’s older brother advised her that a career as a diving coach was not a path to adequate income so she should instead, consider becoming a physical therapist.
HIGH SCHOOL
It was always assumed by the three siblings that they would each earn a college degree. Since DM was early aiming toward a career in physical therapy, her mother advised DM to take elective anatomy and physiology courses in high school in order to learn those basics, which she would later have to take as advanced courses in college.
During summer vacations, DM worked as a diving coach and occasionally packaged food for pick-up orders at a restaurant.
COLLEGE
DM’s diving achievements within the Junior Olympics program attracted the attention of college diving coaches, five of whom offered athletic scholarships on behalf of their respective colleges / universities. DM applied to all five, each of which accepted her for enrollment. She toured 3 of the school campuses. Which to choose? DM’s final decision was based on multiple factors:
* year round climate would be warm (though not blazing hot)
* the financial value of the scholarship was adequate
* a diving teammate would be someone she already knew
* the diving coach’s personality and coaching methods
* the competitiveness of a Division 1 program
CHANGE OF DIRECTION DURING COLLEGE TO IMPROVE CAREER OPTIONS
Ironically, the competitiveness of a Division 1 program, requiring significant time to be devoted to practices and diving meets (much more than at a Division 3 program), began to concern DM: would she have enough time to study her coursework and achieve the grades needed for admission to the limited number of graduate schools for physical therapy? After a full academic year trying to balance athletic and academic pressures, DM decided – on her own – to completely abandon college athletics and transfer to a different university with a stronger reputation for preparing students to be admitted to graduate schools for physical therapy.
CAREER PATH CHALLENGE – CHANGING YOUR PLAN MAY DISAPPOINT SOMEONE ELSE
MD’s decision to abandon her college athletic career affected not only herself, but several others, to whom she would have to announce her decision and listen to their comments:
(1) The college coach who may have pushed the college’s admissions department to accept her application, thereby possibly causing the college to decline someone else’s application – MD explained that her focus had now shifted from athletic to academic performance because she needed to devote all her time to achieving excellent grades to qualify for graduate school. The coach was very disappointed. DM apologized but said she would gladly be a positive reference to diving recruits, if needed. And she was sure the coach would win many diving meets with the remaining talented divers.
(2) Her parents, who had appreciated less financial pressure toward DM’s college expense due to her athletic scholarship and would now be asked to help fund her college expenses without the benefit of any scholarship – DM apologized for having made this decision but hoped her parents would understand that the scholarship required too much time away from studying, which DM really needed to concentrate upon in order to achieve her dream of becoming a physical therapist. They said they were disappointed and hoped she had made the right decision. DM accepted their response as a challenge to prove that the extra academic time would result in better grades and eventually a successful path toward her career goal.
NEW COLLEGE PATH – NOW WITH MORE PRESSURE TO PERFORM
For an athlete standing alone on a high diving board, where all eyes at the swim meet are then focused on the diver standing at attention, focusing on the body movements which had been well practiced toward winning that day’s competition, pressure to perform doesn’t disappear but is learned to be coped with.
DM, now enrolled at her next university, studied hard every day for every course, asked questions when she needed to clarify a point and was rewarded with a 3.8 GPA after her first year, which she proudly reported to her parents. They were very pleased and acknowledged that DM had made the right decision to change her focus from a combination of athletics and academics, to just the academic side. For DM, her parents’ reaction was better than any diving score she had ever achieved. But she realized she had just completed one step along the long path ahead.
In addition to incurring new college expense, DM incurred an additional burden in transferring from one school to another: the second school would not accept all the academic course credits she had earned at her first school. This meant that DM would have to take summer courses in order to stay on schedule to graduate from her new university at the same four year pace.
Again, DM decided to alter her academic path by taking a year off from the university in order to achieve two personal goals: (1) earn money toward a savings account since she would have no time for side jobs when enrolled in graduate school and (2) enroll in science courses at a local community college in order to increase her science related courses GPA, an important factor to support her application to a physical therapist graduate school.
GRADUATE SCHOOL FOR PHYSICAL THERAPY
By the time DM completed her college degree (sometimes known as an “undergraduate” degree), she was married. Coincidentally, her husband was also aiming to become a physical therapist. So they applied to the same, multiple p.t. graduate schools (now conveniently accomplished by preparing one application and then forwarding it to multiple schools, paying separate application fees to each school). They never disclosed (because there was no such requirement and it might have been unwise to do so) to any school that in essence, their individual application was a joint application – i.e. their goal as a married couple was to attend the same graduate school.
After reviewing the responses from the graduate schools to their separate applications, including acceptances and “wait lists” to different schools for each of them, one p.t. graduate school had – fortunately and coincidentally – accepted both of their applications. So they both enrolled at the same time to commence their respective three year, straight through (no summer vacations!) to graduate from accredited physical therapy programs.
REQUIREMENTS TO BE A PHYSICAL THERAPIST
Graduating from an accredited physical therapy graduate school program is a commendable achievement but another hurdle remains to be jumped over before the successful student can legally treat patients as a physical therapist: passing the state’s licensing examination.
One of the final course requirements of DM’s graduate school was to review a book (already paid for as part of her grad school tuition) which focused on preparing p.t. program graduates to pass the licensing test. DM studied hard to meet this next challenge and succeeded in passing the test on her first attempt, a well deserved honor shared by 95% of her classmates – which does not mean that the exam was easy but does mean that each student studied (very) hard, knowing their career depended on eventually passing this one examination.
Editor’s note: Schools which prepare their students for careers which require licenses to practice that profession / trade (e.g. law, medicine, p.t. and technical schools) are aware that students use the school’s first time pass rate statistics to guide their choice among graduate school applications. The exam is offered only four times a year and cannot be taken without having graduated from an accredited p.t. program.
PHYSICAL THERAPIST CAREER OPTIONS
Licensed physical therapists can practice by themselves or within many different settings, including hospitals, schools, working with seniors or children, in-patient or out-patient or in skilled nursing facilities.
FIRST CAREER RELATED JOB IS NEVER A BINDING COMMITMENT
During DM’s final grad school semester, the curriculum included two internships in different physical therapy clinics, each 12 weeks long. In one of her internships, DM worked as a rehabiliation aide, sufficiently impressing the manager who offered to hire her as a full-time physical therapist, if and when she passed the p.t. exam.
DM’s first, full-time employment as a (newly) licensed physical therapist, was within an out-patient clinic, where she was assigned to different clinic sites at the overall management’s discretion according to the scheduled patient count at the clinics and the absence of sufficient staff to provde p.t. that day. While each day’s work with patients added to DM’s experience, this arrangement lacked the opportunity for her to learn from the consistent interaction with the same mentor and co-workers.
Meanwhile, DM knew someone who was in the process of opening his own business to provide in-home and eventually, out-patient physical therapy, the latter in clinics. The business would start with the in-home services, where DM would work until the first out-patient p.t. clinic was ready and when it was, MD would be based at the same clinic on a full-time basis. With the prospect of eventually working within one clinic rather than moving daily from home to home or clinic to clinic, MD agreed to transfer her employment to this new p.t. business.
TAKING A REASONABLE BUSINESS RISK
Editor’s note: A “reasonable” business risk involves several key elements:
(1) some level of competence and experience with the new work to be undertaken
(2) objective (not merely emotional) consideration of the advantages and disadvantages of the new venture
(3) a fall-back / escape plan if the new venture did not develop into a success within a certain time limit
(4) the courage to dedicate yourself to make success happen
(5) the wisdom to abandon the risk if not a successful venture within a certain time limit
As previously noted, making a change in a career plan may affect others and possibly one’s own future, for good or for bad. Would leaving a job after the first 8 weeks (six weeks work plus 2 weeks continuing to work after providing notice of intent to leave) look bad on a future job application? DM accepted that risk, hoping her next career move would be satisfying to the point that she would remain a long-term employee and thus distance herself from any negative impression of having departed her first job in such a short time.
PERSONAL CIRCUMSTANCES MAY ALTER A CAREER PATH
Following marriage, DM and her husband were fortunate to have a child. Husband and wife decided among themselves (their daughter was not yet of voting age, even within their family…..) that DM would take some time off from any work and then, when she was comfortable leaving the baby with day-care, resume working on a part-time basis, which could eventually transition to full-time when the parents concurred that their child was sufficiently independent to not need a stay-at-home parent’s full time attention.
DAILY ACTIVITIES OF A PHYSICAL THERAPIST
Common to most physical therapist’s daily schedules are the following activities:
1. review the patient’s chart which notes the physical issue required for therapy plus the type of therapy applied to date along with any progress or set-backs
2. ask the patient: how are you feeling today? ok following most recent therapy?
3. set-up the p.t. equipment as needed
4. explain today’s therapy goal(s)
5. supervise / monitor the therapy
6. record progress, set-backs and any other relevant comments in the patient’s chart
Note: It may be possible to work with more than one patient at a time.
CAREER CHALLENGES
The new physical therapist needs more than formal education and a license to perform most effectively; the new p.t. needs the opportunity for prompt consultation with experienced physical therapists, to discuss individual patient issues and/or general strategies.
One word within the two word job title is “physical” so it should not be surprising that a p.t. will have to regularly employ their own strengths, involving (since they are all ultimately connected) hands, arms, back, legs, etc. to maneuver patients through the therapy process. And amazingly, p.t.s are people who grow older just like all of their patients… which naturally involves decreased strength of the p.t.’s various muscles to perform effective therapies.
CAREER SATISFACTION
* Working directly with people for progress toward their goals
* Helping people achieve levels of performance they didn’t know was possible
* Worksite opportunites are very diverse: from hospitals to homes and clinics
* Time requirements are very diverse: from part-time to full-time including school based jobs with summers and holidays completely off-duty
* The need for physical therapy remains steady despite world events such as pandemics and national or local economic recessions
DM’s RECOMMENDATION
Looking back, DM would have at least considered one alternative career path toward the same goal of being a licensed physical therapist: investigate schools which offer a six year program in physical therapy, instead of college for 4 years, then graduate school for 3 years. The advantages of combining college and graduate school courses into one continuing curriculum include less tuition payments, no concerns about course credits being accepted by a different school, no worries about admission to a separate graduate school (assuming the student maintains a GPA each year to qualify for graduation) and getting an earlier start within the real world of physical therapists.
Editor’s note: Such an alternative plan would not preclude an aspiring physical therapist from continuing to enjoy diving from a high board into a pool (of adequate depth!) whenever the time and the pool were available.
