- Joined
- Oct 14, 2014
- Messages
- 37
- Reaction score
- 4
I'm in my first semester of OT school. I've come to realize that I'm in a program that is totally wrong for the way I learn. I applied to a lot of schools that I didn't know a lot about because my undergraduate GPA from a long time ago was pretty low. I didn't apply to some nearby schools because tuition was high at the private schools and class size was large at some public schools. Now I'm at an out of state school with high tuition *and* larger class sizes than the school I didn't apply to. I knew about the large class sizes (50 or 60 people) and reliance on group discussions to make up for lack of professor interaction. What I didn't know, is that some professors are completely anti-textbook, and anti-slides. We get handouts and Google. Others are minimalist on slides and/or textbook. So far a lot of the suggested textbooks have been short or else big books that cover many topics briefly.
I have a learning disability and some physical health problems. Although one reason I went to this school was because they are supposed to have really good disability support, I'm not getting a ton of support from the professors as far as things that they originally agreed to as far as my accommodations. In the past, I've compensated pretty well for the learning disability by being a natural speed reader. Light fiction 150 pages an hour. Heavy academic reading quite a bit less depending on how much highlighting or writing I do. I don't memorize well, and not great at writing either. Writing things while on the internet tends to lead to massive distractibility.
If I can read a textbook (or other written material) before class, I can understand the lecture a lot better. But the group discussions are killing me because I can't hear the other group members over the tons of people talking in the room. I also need to see concrete examples of something applied before I can fit it into whatever theory we are discussing.
Unless something changes, I'm going to be spending a good amount of time in class doing activities that don't help me learn, and having to search for books to learn this material on my own.
What textbooks have you found most useful in your OT classes? Right now, Willard and Spackman's OT fits into the "Too many subjects and not enough detail" category, Occupation-Based Activity Analysis by Taylor would be more useful with more concrete examples.
I have a learning disability and some physical health problems. Although one reason I went to this school was because they are supposed to have really good disability support, I'm not getting a ton of support from the professors as far as things that they originally agreed to as far as my accommodations. In the past, I've compensated pretty well for the learning disability by being a natural speed reader. Light fiction 150 pages an hour. Heavy academic reading quite a bit less depending on how much highlighting or writing I do. I don't memorize well, and not great at writing either. Writing things while on the internet tends to lead to massive distractibility.
If I can read a textbook (or other written material) before class, I can understand the lecture a lot better. But the group discussions are killing me because I can't hear the other group members over the tons of people talking in the room. I also need to see concrete examples of something applied before I can fit it into whatever theory we are discussing.
Unless something changes, I'm going to be spending a good amount of time in class doing activities that don't help me learn, and having to search for books to learn this material on my own.
What textbooks have you found most useful in your OT classes? Right now, Willard and Spackman's OT fits into the "Too many subjects and not enough detail" category, Occupation-Based Activity Analysis by Taylor would be more useful with more concrete examples.
