Trying to work out if an Occupational Therapy degree at USYD is really for you?
Let’s get down and personal with Jessie Lee, who is completing her final year of the Bachelor of Applied Science (Occupational Therapy) at USYD. She’s here to share her own personal experience with this degree, including the pros and cons!
So, read on to see what she has to say!
Why should you study an Occupational Therapy degree at USYD?
Top 3 Pros of an Occupational Therapy Degree
Top 3 Cons of an Occupational Therapy Degree
Mistakes You Shouldn’t Make
Things to Know Before Starting USYD Occupational Therapy
What Makes this Degree Different
Motivations for Studying USYD Occupational Therapy
Potential Career Paths
Why should you study an Occupational Therapy (OT) degree at USYD?
A Bachelor of Applied Science (Occupational Therapy) at USYD is a highly rewarding degree as you learn the fundamental theory and practical skills to make an impact in the lives of those in need.
USYD’s extensive placements and practicals don’t disappoint, as they provides students with the valuable experience they need to understand OT first-hand, shaping you as a real health-care professional who is eligible for accreditation under the Occupational Therapy Board towards the end of the degree.
With world-class facilities and teaching from the health faculty, USYD reigns 1st in Australia for Life Sciences and Medicine under the 2021 QS World University Rankings. Coming in 1st in Australia and 4th worldwide for graduate employability, you’re sure to secure a job following your graduation!
Top 3 Pros of a Occupational Therapy degree
#1: Diverse range of placements
If you’re looking to gain a wide variety of experiences, USYD’s OT degree and its placements allow you to work in a variety of situations and settings such as hospitals, schools, age care, community centres and industries. Meet new people with their own unique personalities, cultural backgrounds and needs as you empower them to strive through life again!
Jessie adds that USYD’s placements also provide a great way to get to learn what a professional occupational therapist does. “Placements are a great learning opportunity to learn. I definitely felt like I learnt a lot more from the couple weeks of placements than my entire semester,” she says.
Besides OT work, USYD’s placements are also a great way to figure out how to work well in a multidisciplinary team, which can be especially important when you’re working with other professions in your later career.
“Working in different areas has helped me understand which areas I want to specialise in and what it means to work with health professionals from other sectors like physios and health clinicians,” Jessie says.
Ultimately, these placements will prepare you to work in almost any field that involves OT.
“It’s a very broad degree,” Jessie says. “When you come out, you can essentially work anywhere like schools, community and aged care. This means you have a lot more job opportunities as well.”
#2: Close-knitted community and support
“For OT, you kind of stick with the same people throughout your entire degree so you really do make a lot of good friends,” Jessie says. This is because everyone doing OT is enrolled in the same subjects as you so you’ll see the same people almost everyday for the 4 years of the degree.
Jessie adds, “It is very encouraging to be able to rely and lean on people knowing that we are going through the same things and doing the same subjects. As a result, we all help each other out and the community is very strong.”
On top of that, USYD’s new state of the art building, the Susan Wakil Health Building also supports its OT students well with its facilities, equipment and simulation labs that are well catered to the OT field. “We are very well looked after there!” Jessie says.
#3: Creative problem solving
If thinking outside of the box is your thing, USYD’s OT degree will certainly be highly engaging for you!
Jessie explains that a lot of the assessments require creative thinking, especially since you’ll be dealing with different types of patients with their own unique needs and wants.
As Jessie says, “Every person that you look at is different and because of that, you need to find different strategies and problem solve for them in different ways. In that sense, things never really get boring!”
When I asked Jessie for an example of the assessments that require creative thinking, she explained, “In one of our assignments we had to learn how to use technology to make things more accessible for people with disabilities. We were given a case study about this guy with a spinal cord injury and we had to help him find a way to access his phone, laptop and stuff to go to university to study.”
These assessments can get really interesting as Jessie says, “There is essentially no one right way to approach it. It’s really all about the way you problem solve and the way you create a technology system. It does require a lot of thinking as there are a lot of components you have to consider but overall, I thought it was a pretty fun assignment!”
Top 3 Cons of a Occupational Therapy degree
#1: Difficult to get good marks
While USYD’s OT assessments can be real fun and creative, the subjective nature of OT can also mean that it is difficult to gauge how to get good marks in all assessments. As Jessie explains, “When it comes to assignments, it is very justification and critical thinking based and it is not necessarily logical like maths where there is a right and wrong answer.”
“So, it can be quite difficult at times to get good marks,” Jessie says. “For exams, you come out of it not knowing whether you’ve done really great or not because there is no clear right or wrong answer. You have to justify yourself with evidence otherwise that doesn’t count and that can be quite difficult for some people.”
#2: Lots of verbal and written examinations
If you’re good at English, it may come in handy in this OT degree. Jessie says, “For OT, it’s very communication based so there is a lot of writing and a lot of critical thinking involved.”
OT students also need to pass oral exams called VIVA, where your practical and verbal skills are being assessed by a supervisor in person. There can be a lot of added pressure to do well as Jessie describes, “These assessments can be quite stressful and we do have a lot of those.” But ultimately, it trains students to perform well on their feet in real life.
As such, Jessie explains, “There is an expectation that you have to have good language skills and that has been difficult for some of my friends who do not speak English as a first language but at the end of the day, you’ll get there!”
#3: Underrepresented profession
The harsh truth is that OT is not a very popular healthcare profession and this can affect how willing patients are to receive your care.
“Not many people actually know what OT is so you do spend a lot of time trying to explain what OT is and a lot of the times people do not appreciate what OT is because they do not know who we are — and we get confused a lot with physios,” Jessie explains.
The lack of awareness and knowledge of what an OT really does can discourage future clients from choosing to receive care from an OT, which could affect your career prospects. As Jessie says, “Not many people know who we are so we may not be able to help them if they think that they do not need OTs.”
Any regrets?
“I regret not getting to know some people better. At the end of the day, you are there two, three times a week for four days and I stuck to the same group of people and did not expand my circle of friends until the last semester so it would’ve been very cool to start those relationships a bit earlier,” Jessie shares.
What do you wish you had known before studying USYD Occupational Therapy?
#1: Be open-minded
As an OT professional, you’ll be encouraging others to utilise their strengths in difficult situations, so it’s very important to stay open-minded and positive about other people’s potential.
“One thing I learned was not to be so close-minded when it comes to people with disabilities or mental illnesses and diseases,” Jessie says. “This degree really teaches you how to see people in a positive light.”
On a personal note, Jessie recounts how this degree has transformed her perception of people and their abilities. “It’s really changed the way I see people in general. Before this degree, I would say that I had a lot of prejudice but this degree has helped me to learn to see the strengths in everyone and not focus on their weaknesses or the first thing you see. In OT, you learn to be very strengths based,” highlights Jessie. How eye-opening!
#2: Be kind to yourself
With the stressful assignments happening at the same time as your placements, it can be very easy to put a lot of pressure on yourself to do well. So, it’s important to take a step back at times and breathe a little.
Jessie touches on her personal experience with stress during this degree, “I learned not to put so much pressure on myself when it comes to placements and assignments. I wish I had taken those hours as being marked based on a student’s standard rather than a clinician standard. Knowing this would’ve made me feel a lot more relaxed.”
That being said, Jessie puts things into perspective as she says, “We are given this gold standard by tutors and professors but they’ve had 20 years of experience so there’s no expectation for you to perform on that level and they won’t give you an assignment that’s beyond your capacity. If I knew that at the start, I could’ve relaxed a bit more.”
#3: The teachers are approachable
If you think lecturers and tutors at USYD aren’t as approachable as your high school teachers, think again! “My teachers from high school were very supportive and very personable but I had the impression that you can’t approach lecturers and go up to them for help but that’s completely different to what it was actually like!”
In fact, USYD’s Health Faculty is very friendly and passionate about helping students reach their greatest potential.
Be sure to maximise these opportunities to learn more from USYD’s OT experts, as Jessie says, “I wish I had made the most of these opportunities because the professors are very nice and compassionate and empathetic so you can honestly book meetings, ask questions and let them know what you’re struggling with and they’ll help you out.”
What makes this degree different from ones offered at other universities?
#1: World class teaching staff
At USYD, you only learn from the best! As Jessie says, “Speaking from personal experience, the lecturers and professors are very nice people who have a lot of experience.”
In fact, the lecturers have more than experience — they are the ones who’ve written some of the content that you learn in class! So, it’s like you’re being taught by real leaders in the OT field.
“It’s so cool because sometimes you’ll be reading journal articles when you’re doing your assignments and you’ll see that your professor wrote the journal articles so you know that they know their stuff!” Jessie says.
#2: Resources tailored to OT
The Susan Wakil Building is USYD’s newest health building and it provides all the cool high tech equipment and resources that is tailored to the OT curriculum. As an OT student, you even get to use the fake house which replicates a real house so you can practise your skills in a life-like environment!
As Jessie describes, “In the old Cumberland campus, it was more like a fake bathroom and a fake kitchen and that’s it but the one at Susan Wakil has all these interior design so it feels like a real house — it has a TV, and a dining table and it’s an entire mini house. You get the full package!”
And that’s not all! “We have a splinting room as well for hand therapy, so you can make those little casts for your hands. OT deals with this, so we get the whole entire room to ourselves,” Jessie says. “We also have fake wards and more facilities in the simulation rooms and another fake big hospital room where we try out electric beds and all that.”
With all this cool equipment, you really feel heard as an OT student under USYD’s Health Faculty. As Jessie puts it, “You look at it and think, ‘Wow, they really care about OT!’”
What inspired you to choose USYD Occupational Therapy?
“Originally, I had no plans to do OT in high school and I was always very adamant that I’ll do Psychology so I applied for it but after the first round of offers came out, I just realised that Psychology wasn’t for me,” Jessie recounts.
“So, I ended up doing a day of volunteering as an OT assistant at a rehab hospital and after doing that for one day, I absolutely loved it! I had no idea what OT was going into that volunteering experience but I came out of it knowing that this is what I want to do!”
As for why Jessie chose to do her degree at USYD, she says, “The reason why I chose USYD is because it was the only university I knew at the time that was well-known for OT. I also applied for ACU but I haven’t heard many reviews about the ACU experience.”
What are the possible career paths?
Graduating with an OT degree from USYD opens up a variety of areas you can venture into. Due to USYD’s extensive placements and practicals, you’ll already have the upper hand in working in many different environments, with all ranges of age groups and personalities.
Here are just some ideas of career pathways that an OT degree from USYD can take you:
- Aged care worker
- Accessibility services
- Assistive technology specialist
- Community health worker
- Disability services administrator
- Early childhood worker
- Mental health worker
- Health coach
- Hand therapist
- Home modification specialist
- Rehabilitation worker
- Health policy developer
And that’s a wrap! If you enjoyed reading this article, stay tuned for the next one.
Kate Lynn Law graduated in 2017 with an all rounders HSC award and an ATAR of 97.65. Passionate about mentoring, she enjoys working with high school students to improve their academic, work and life skills in preparation for the HSC and what comes next. An avid blogger, Kate had administered a creative writing page for over 2000 people since 2013, writing to an international audience since her early teenage years.
