Dr. Florence Clark, Associate Dean and Chair of my department (USC Occupational Science and Occupational Therapy Division), taught part of one of my doctoral classes this semester. She also happens to be the current president of our national professional association, the American Occupational Therapy Association (AOTA).
As part of an assignment in her class, entitled "Innovative Competition", Dr. Clark asked us to create an innovative campaign to promote AOTA's Centennial Vision (our Occupational Therapy profession turns 100 in 2017):
"We envision that occupational therapy is a powerful, widely recognized, science-driven, and evidence-based profession with a globally connected and diverse workforce meeting society's occupational needs."
**To clarify, occupation does not refer solely to "jobs" or "employment"; rather, historically for our profession, the term "occupation" deals with all the meaningful activities that 'occupy' one's time... which can be as simple as daily self-care like oral hygiene, or as involved and complicated as work, social, or leisure pursuits.
My classmate/partner for the project and I decided to examine ways to support the vision at the local and national/global level, respectively. For my national/global approach, I decided to create a video and youtube entry that would capture the inspiration I felt while attending the annual AOTA Conference in Philadelphia this past month. My hope was that it would inspire the OTs who attended, and those who did not... as I was inspired... to go forth and support the Centennial Vision in their own practices and locales around the country.
Dr. Clark ended up really enjoying the video, as it had personal meaning for her.... and my partner and I tied to win the competition! We will be recognized at our graduation in a couple weeks. Never expected to win at all. For those of you who do video editing and similar graphics work, you will know how long it takes to make such things... for this 2 minute video which was "quickly" thrown together, I still spent a good 15+ hours creating, producing, and editing this video. So, in terms of video editing, it is definitely not the most amazing work, and I would have loved to have been able to spend more time...
Nevertheless, it was well received. The following is a link to the video:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OF14CadfI_Q
And how does this relate to my weight loss goals? Well, a few reasons... the Conference, making this video, and all related tasks really detracted from the time I needed to exercise... since many parts of the Conference, and editing the video were extremely sedentary tasks. But in general, I'm still proud of what I was able to accomplish... and as cheesy at it sounds, this weight loss... and the process of trying to maintain my progress towards this goal, has given me the courage and drive to try and accomplish feats in other facets of my life as well. Life change is hard... so success in one avenue can really spark the flame that drives change in other facets.
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