Vince Harrison
First-year physical therapy graduate student
Michael Kovach
Second-year physical therapy graduate student
What has been the most challenging aspects of being a PT student?
VH: The change of pace. All of a sudden there’s a lot more information coming at you at a quicker pace. You have to make sure that you have proper study habits in undergrad to make sure that you’re able to manage a higher level of education when the time comes. A few weeks ago we had six tests in seven days. I was studying for hours and hours every night; they weren’t just tests that I could do well on by studying the night before. Overall, there are a lot of tests and there’s a lot of information coming at you really fast.
MK: The most challenging thing is just the bulk of classes. There are no easy classes; they’re all pretty difficult. A lot of times during the semester in undergrad you have one or two hard classes and the other ones are pretty easy to do, so you just fly through the other ones. With PT school all the classes are hard. You’ll have about 16 or 17 credits, so you really have to work hard and there are exams every week, sometimes two. It’s just a lot of material; you’ve gotta just stay really focused on not letting yourself get behind and just constantly studying.
What is the most rewarding part of PT school?
VH: For the last four years, I’ve known that I wanted to do PT. So finally being here and starting to do things that apply to my profession is really exciting. Four years ago, I saw where I wanted to be in the future and I put in a lot of hard work in undergrad, got good grades, did observation hours, all of that stuff. Now it’s all coming together and I’m where I want to be. That’s the most rewarding thing.
MK: I think that if you didn’t like the profession there really wouldn’t be a lot of rewards. But if you really like what you’re doing, you get to work to help people recover and that’s a rewarding thing in of itself. It’s really fun to work one-on-one with patients and see their improvement.
What made you decide to do PT?
VH: My senior year of high school, I was debating whether or not I wanted to be an orthopedic surgeon. I guess the schooling kind of intimidated me—the four years of medical school, residency and fellowship— and I didn’t want to start working and get out of school when I was close to my thirties. I learned about the Andrews program that would allow me to graduate with my doctorate in physical therapy at 22. I also did shadowing and it seemed like something I would really enjoy.
MK: I didn’t decide till my senior year of high school. I wasn’t really sure what I wanted to do. I’ve always liked sports a lot, so I’m always watching football every Sunday. Whenever my favorite player would get hurt, I’d wonder what happened, whether he tore his ACL or injured something else. After a while, you start to pick up what’s going on based on the way that people are hit, and I started getting into the recovery for different injuries. Those things really fascinated me. I shadowed a physical therapist and realized that I liked the profession. I now realize that I also really like working oneon-one with people. A lot of different things combined together and made me think “I want to do this”. I also went to Peru as a student missionary for a year a couple years ago and did physical therapy over there.
Is PT school everything that you expected? In what ways has it defied or exceeded your expectations?
VH: I didn’t really have that many expectations. I just knew that it was going to be more geared towards what I wanted to do.
I would say it met that expectation because in undergrad you take classes like Bible and history and English, things that seem less directly applicable to your specific field. For example, every time I bring up a question to pre-med students about the body and how something works, they usually don’t know because they don’t have to take anatomy and physiology. That has always confused me. I appreciate that all of my classes now are directly applicable to what I want to do.
MK: They say that you learn a lot in the actual profession and that you don’t learn a lot of what you need to in school, so I thought “Okay, that’s what it’s going to be”. I figured I’d just get out and it would all click later, but I feel like it has exceeded that expectation in the sense that I know what I’m doing now. Not all the way—I still have a year of school left and then clinicals. But I feel like I’m at a point where I’m definitely going to be prepared for my first day on the job.
What are your favorite aspects of the PT program at Andrews?
VH: I definitely like the family aspect of it. You only have 40 students in the class because of the cap. When you’re in the program it really is a family environment. All the other students are helping each other and everyone wants to see everyone succeed. The number one thing is that everyone talks to each other, they hang out, and they all want to help each other.
MK: You get really close to all the people in your class because there’s forty of us. It’s a pretty small class and you see each other every day for at least three or four hours. I think that the program here is really good and all the professors are really good. They really want you to succeed. In some other programs, it’s really competitive and they don’t really care about you. Here, if you’re struggling they help you out. You know they want you to do the best you can. I don’t think there’s ever a time that I’ve been like, “I can’t do this,” the whole time it’s like, “Okay, I might have to work harder to do this, but I know I can get through it all.”
Do you think your experience in PT school has changed anything significant about you as a person? In what ways are you different now than you were at the beginning of the year?
VH: I would definitely say it’s made me more disciplined because you have to manage everything and learn to prioritize what you want, who you want to hang out and how to prioritize time in general. Trying to get to bed earlier is definitely something I struggled with at first. That’s the number one thing. I just prioritize my time better now.
MK: I got married last spring, right in the middle of PT school, so that changed a lot of things. I don’t know that I can single out anything that PT school itself has changed other than maybe just watching how I spend my time a little better. I know I’ve definitely gotten more mature and I feel more like an adult than a kid.
What advice do you have for students interested in pursuing a career in PT? What are the characteristics that you think every good PT needs to have?
VH: If you want to become a physical therapist, definitely know the reason why. I think that a lot of people go the pre-med route, for example, because they want to make a lot of money. I feel like that should never be the reason. You’re going to be spending a long time in your career so definitely know why you want to do it. As for characteristics, you need to be able to communicate well with people. You’re going to be interacting with patients every day and talking to doctors and nurses and speech pathologists and occupational therapists, so good communication skills are really important. Something that gave me an interest in physical therapy is that I like to fix problems; when something’s not working with the body, I like to figure out why. Something I’ve learned is that often times, if you’ve got an issue in your ankle, it’s not really your ankle; it’s a problem with your knee or hip. So I’d say problem-solving is another really important characteristic for all physical therapists to have.
MK: You’ve got to work really hard. I believe anyone could do physical therapy. It’s not so hard that you can’t do it, but, as with everything, you do need to put in the work. If you keep studying and putting forth the effort I think it’s definitely possible. In terms of characteristics, you’ve just really got to care about the patient instead of making it into just a job where you treat one patient and move on to the next without developing a relationship with them. Since you’re working one-on-one with somebody, if you do develop a relationship with them you’re going to see better results. It’s going to be better for them and it’s going to be better for you if you actually care.
The Student Movement is the official student newspaper of Andrews University. Opinions expressed in the Student Movement are those of the authors and do not necessarily reflect the opinions of the editors, Andrews University or the Seventh-day Adventist church.