At the start of this year I was grinding every day at a physical therapy clinic, hoping to start applying to schools right around this time of year. But like many peoples' lives, everything changed when covid hit. Although it's been horrible having to deal with a pandemic for the first time, I do appreciate the opportunities that have arisen from it.
For all of my life I've been told by my family to pursue some career in the medical field. Unsurprising, since most of my family has some kind of job in the field. My mom and aunt are both nurses, my grandma, and uncle both doctors, and my sister is on her way to becoming a physical therapist. For a very long time in my life I thought I was destined to become a doctor and was eager to follow in the familial footsteps. I was on the right path, studying biology at UCSB but after a couple classes of rough organic chemistry classes and dealing with some mental health issues I decided to take some time off from school.
Upon returning, I had realized by then that perhaps being a doctor isn't quite right for me so I switched my focus onto something more realistic. I thought why not follow my sister's footsteps and try to become a physical therapist(PT). Since I had played baseball up until high school and had to do some physical therapy for my shoulder for a couple months, I felt that I had a handle of what a PT does. So I switched my major to psychology and started making up for lost time, hoping to graduate as quick as possible.Within a year I had knocked out most of my pre-requisites for PT school except for a class or two and was ready to graduate.
In order to even think about applying to PT schools however, first I had to start working at a clinic in order to get my required hours. I believe it's recommended to have somewhere between 100-300 hours for most schools that I was interested in applying to so I had a ways to go. Luckily, not long after I graduated and moved back home I was hired at a nice clinic close by and began working within a month of graduation. As aides our duties were actually quite vast. Between, cleaning tables, working with patients, communicating with the front desk and all the therapists, and scheduling the rooms and tables, there wasn't too much downtime during the rush hours. And as a new aide, I was also tasked with learning a whole list of exercises so that I could later be able to teach them to patients. So for the first two months or so I was barely working with the patients besides taking them back at the beginning of their appointments to a specific table. However, once I started working more with patients and started to teach more exercises my enthusiasm for the job slowly started to drop.
The world of physical therapy seems like it might be full of rainbows and positivity because you're supposedly healing people, but the road to recovery is often surrounded by a storm. The mental aspect of physical therapy isn't often talked about but I now realize just how important it can be. Many people that seek physical therapy are simply defeated from having to deal with chronic pains and motivating them to do exercises when they know it'll be painful can be quite difficult. Often times, a patient's mental struggle with therapy was projected onto the aides or the therapists and although we understood where they were coming from it still feel great when a patient was rude or acting entitled.Anyways, the more I did it the more I just realized that it wasn't for me. And then covid hit like a meteor.
The clinic I work at was shut down pretty quick with no definitive date of opening up again and I was stuck at home with nothing to do but play games. It was during those first few months that I was introduced to the wonderful world of programming.
I began watching some intro-to-coding videos and started to get hooked pretty quick. I had always loved dealing with computers and electronics from a young age, but due to the my family's pressure to become a health professional, I had never even considered a career in programming. The more I considered it, the more I began to feel like it was the great path for me and within a month or two I was exploring bootcamps and coding programs that I could enroll in. I was able to find Flatiron School, and am currently in phase 2 of the program already 6 weeks in!
To me coding isn't just about the money or the availability of jobs out there (although it certainly helps :)). Coding is challenging. If it weren't everyone would be doing it.It's more than just writing lines of code for hours on end. It's solving problems with creative solutions. Although when you code you're peaking behind the green curtain and seeing how something works with a lines of a certain language, there is still something magical about working on your code and then seeing it transform into something that works. The possibilities of programming are endless and I think that's what excites me the most about this field. I have the freedom and the ability to learn so much more about anything I want. And that is really something quite special.
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