Oh, T

I’m an OT student. For a long time I didn’t think this would happen. I didn’t think anything would happen. I was stuck in the mire of uncertainty that has claimed so many of my fellow millennials. I wanted a career, but more than that, I wanted a calling. Yet in this age of entertainment at my fingertips I never bothered to take the time to explore what that might mean. I filled up my undergraduate years with church events, homework, playing with friends, and basically not doing any real thinking about what I’d do after graduating.

So then I graduated and discovered that contrary to what I’d been led to believe in high school, you don’t just get a job when you have a bachelor’s degree. (Where are the lines of prospective employers? You mean those aren't real?) I applied and applied to places, but during that whole process I realized that I didn’t really want any of those jobs. My roommate at the time was working at a preschool, and she got me an application. I put off filling it out because I had specialized in gerontology in school and I wanted to get a job in that. But finally, per my sister’s prompting, I turned in the application. When I got the interview, I was ecstatic. It went well, but I doubted I got the job. I did, and it became one of the weirdest years of my life.

I could fill pages with the things that made that year weird and horrible in many ways. But all the craziness brought to the surface the fact that I was miserable in my life, I didn’t know what I wanted to do with it, and I didn’t know how to figure that out. I wanted to live be living out a calling, and instead, I felt like I was trying to swim upstream. Due to some drama at work, I quit after about a year and moved back into my parents’ basement. I told people it was because my dad had a really invasive surgery and my parents needed my help maintaining the yard. This was true. However, the real reason was that I couldn’t stay in Fort Collins, in my job, in my life. I felt like I was dying inside.

I started working at Starbucks, going to therapy, and living without intense expectations from other people and life. And slowly, surely, things started to make sense. I realized that I wanted to celebrate the image of God in people. I wanted to affirm people’s worth, especially in times where they might not feel like they have much. That’s why I chose occupational therapy. The way OT helps people to do what they want and need to be able to do is so affirming to their worth. Plus, it is a creative, yet scientifically based career, and that's pretty awesome. I wrote a song about it. I may post it if I ever figure out how.