Physical therapy: personal characteristics and motivating factors, PTCAS

Which personal characteristics and motivating factors have led you to pursue the profession of physical therapy?

Everybody makes mistakes. We would not be human if we did not. My mistake was not being dedicated to my school work when I started college. After taking a psychology class in high school I got very interested in that field and wanted to pursue a career in it. It was not until I took a few psychology classes in college that I realized that this wasn't for me. I would sit in class, take two hours of notes, and then go back to my dorm room. The material did not interest me and I never wanted to open my notebook to study. My exam scores were not the greatest. I did not know what to do. I could not go into a field that I was not interested about. Also, I would get nowhere with poor grades.

I decided to change my major to biology and pursue a career in physical therapy. In high school it was between psychology and physical therapy. I have had many injuries in the past and have gone for physical therapy which made me interested in that field. Unfortunately I chose psychology over physical therapy in the beginning, but that is over with now.

As a biology major I took anatomy and physiology 1 and 2. I fell in love with that class. I knew that studying the human body was something I wanted to do. My professor and I were really close. I would go to his office everyday and ask questions. On a Friday night, I would be in the lab studying all the terms were needed to know for the practical. He saw this and knew I was very dedicated to my work. My hard work paid off with high grades in anatomy and physiology. This was very different from when I first started out as a psychology major and never wanted to study the material. After taking this class I knew that this is what I wanted to do.

My first experience in the field was volunteering at an outpatient physical therapy clinic. This clinic had a variety of patients ranging from people who are recovering from strokes to your high school athlete with a broken ankle. I got to have a first hand experience to what a physical therapist does on a daily basis. Seeing the patients recover and be able to walk again was amazing. Everyday in the mail would be thank you cards to the therapists who helped treat them. It made the therapists proud that their hard work paid off and now their patients are recovered. While I was volunteering at the clinic I was able to work one on one with a patient. This patient had a spinal cord infarction which is also known as a spinal stroke. After being in a hospital and going to a neurologist, he was sent to the clinic I volunteered at. The therapists were always working with him for about 2 hours and teaching me all about the program they have him on. When the patient first started out he was walking with a cane and was not able to walk backwards. After the therapists trusted me more they would let me work with him. We would go through a variety of exercises and at the end of the day he would say thank you. This made me feel great that I was able to help this patient and he appreciated it. After about 2 months he was not walking with a cane and we would do exercises to help him be able to walk backwards. The patient made great improvements and was able to start walking backwards. Now that he is able to walk without a cane he can practice with his two sons who are on the baseball team. That is what he missed the most. It made me feel great that now this person can go back to what he loves to do. The physical therapists did not let my hard work go unnoticed and hired me as an aide. Now I am able to see a range of patients and try to work with the therapists to get these people back to 100 percent.

This field takes a lot of hard work and dedication. You have to love what you do and love making people go back to what they love to do. I know that I can make a positive impact on people's lives not only by helping them, but by showing them that I want to help them. As I work my way to becoming a physical therapist I am very interested to seeing what the future in this field holds for me.

I liked it!

I think you have clearly talked about motivations and factors. But the first paragraph is too negative. Instead of focus on the negative points of your experience and show it as a 100% mistake, you can talk about its positive effects and how study psychology could help you to succeed in physical therapy. Because I think, the psychology helps for better understanding of people and since you have face-to-face interactions with people who need help, you can utilize your previous experience.