Personal Narrative: A Career In Physical Therapy

I’ve always been interested in Veterinary Medicine, but since the Veterinarian was too busy to do my interview, I moved on to my next major that I would love to do, which is being a physical therapist. I asked a family friend if he had time for me to interview him, he said “yes, I would love to.” Getting out of my GMC truck, on a hot afternoon I felt butterflies in my stomach. Walking through the doors of this big building, the front desk sending me to this long hallway that leads up to his office had me so anxious to ask him questions since this is my first interview. As I knocked and opened the door, Mr. Garza was seated at his desk looking like if he was waiting for me all afternoon and told me to come in. Finally, I sat down with a pen
and paper, ready to ask him questions then processed with my first question. My very first question had to start off with a bang so that this interview won’t be so boring.
Standing up straight, ready to write, I asked him one of my very first questions that I had written on a piece of paper. What inspired you to become a physical therapist? Then Mr. Garza talked, he said, “when I tore my meniscus and posterior cruciate ligament during my senior year in football I was crushed, it was one of the few things that I truly loved and it was gone for good in a split second, faster than you can say my last name. At the time of my injury I didn’t understand what I was going through, but as I became educated in the field I now know that I was going through depression and different stages of coping with a sports injury. After being diagnosed with a multiple tears in my knee I had to undergo arthroscopic surgery to repair the ligaments, which would put me out of sports and activity for 6 weeks minimum. After surgery I was prescribed multiple therapeutic options, which included an automatic icing machine and physical therapy at the sports medicine clinic. Attending therapy sessions at the sports medicine clinic comforted me and while I was there I became intrigued by the work of the therapist, as he had to customize my therapy depending on the strength and range of motion I had after every session.” Breathtaking, I cried a little bit while interviewing him. Mr. Garza is a very strong man who didn’t get to follow his dream because of a sports injury, but he’s very
thankful for what happened, because if it wasn’t for him getting hurt, he doesn’t know where he would’ve gone after high school. As I wanted to get to know more information on how physical therapy works, I asked him, what would you say is the hardest part of becoming a physical therapist? Mr. Garza paused for a moment, thinking on what to say or where to start from, then said; “The hardest part of becoming a physical therapist would be getting accepted into a physical therapy school, because GPA and prerequisites are the major factors for that. In order to get accepted your GPA is usually a 3.5 or up and still then it’s a struggle. Many people will be denied due to limited space in the physical therapy program. Prerequisites for physical therapy school are tough due to the detailed information in anatomy and physically in ration to sports and biomechanics.” After he was done, my mouth just dropped and I explained to him that I never knew it was that difficult to get into a physical therapy school. After asking two questions about physical therapy, I slowly started getting into writing. When I was done drinking my water and waiting for Mr. Garza to finish drinking his water, I asked him, while becoming a physical therapist what kinds of writing is need to be done in this occupation? His response was, “The main writing done is literature reviews/summaries which is journal article reviews written by accredited sources which are found in the science and health data bases all written and summarized in APA format.” His answered was very short, but made me understand what kind of writings is done. The fourth question I had asked was, what are your feelings toward writing whenever you have to write something?
Mr. Garza laughed and said, “ Now that I’m a physical therapist I feel that I am a very strong writer and I tend to do my best work under pressure (last minute) but this wasn’t always the case because as a high school student and a college student I dreaded writing and I wasn’t very good at it, but going through the years, college shaped and trained me to be a better writer than I was.” I sat there in shock because of how he just explained to me that he worked better under pressure. After he saw my face reaction, he explained to me that it only works for some people so if you do not work good under pressure he advised me not to do it, that’s just how he would get his writing assignments
done. As soon as he was done answer my fourth question I asked him, have you ever done a writing assignment that you though you did well on, but when you got it back you did bad? Right away Mr. Garza had and answer, he did not hesitate to talk about it. He explained, “When I was taking English 2 my sophomore year in college I had an essay that was supposed to be about a song with the lyrics of your birth month in it, so I chose “November rain by guns n roses” well it was one of many essays that I wrote over a few weeks, rather than sitting down and finishing it in one siting. I chose to write my essay bits and pieces and pick up where I left off the next time, well when I got my grade and feedback my professor said that it was unorganized and unstructured, which made me realize that I was better off writing it last minute or in one sitting than taking my time on an essay.” He also explained to me how that essay made a big impact on him and changed how he wrote essays, he also mentioned that he would never forget that day. For my last question I had on my piece of paper I asked him, now what are your steps when you’re writing? He said, “When I get a topic and find multiple articles to write about because one may not be sufficient and have enough information, so when you begin to write and you have read multiple articles its easier to convey your message or write about the topic, once I have all my information I usually write down or type my main points of interest then begin to type and elaborate on the points.” When Mr. Garza was done with all of my questions, I asked him how he likes being a physical therapist, he gave me this big huge smile and said, “it is now one of the few things that I truly love doing now.”