Self-Assessment – Year One (2017-2018)

Elizabeth Osantowski

In the first year as a DPT student, I faced many challenges that made me grow

as a person. At the beginning of the year in the summer semester, I started off

struggling right away. I struggled because of my lack of anatomy knowledge (which I

took in 2013) and the difficulty of transitioning into graduate school. In this semester, I

had a lot of distractions. I was trying to meet the rest of my cohort and have a social life,

live independently for the first time, and adjust back into the school life. It was over a

year that I have been out of school, so adjusting back into school life with the additional

changes of changing my studying habits from undergraduate to graduate. I did not have

good time management skills or organizational skills. In this first semester, my biggest

distraction was the social aspect of meeting my cohort and always feeling like I had to

go to everything because I did not know how to say “no” to social outings.

As fall semester began, I was on academic probation from the summer semester,

so my goal was to get off academic probation. I was kindly offered tutoring with Charlie

Hisey, 2nd year DPT student. Gratefully we met 1-2x per week, which facilitated my

learning. He taught me how to critically think, taught me new ways to take notes and

different ways of studying, and was able to make quizzes for me to work on my testing

anxiety. He was able to adjust tutoring to how I learned best, so tutoring was very

beneficial. At the beginning of the semester, we did not know how the tutoring process

worked or which classes I needed to be tutored in, so it was trial and error for a while of

the semester. During this semester, I faced personal struggles with my family. My

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brother was attacked and ended in up in the hospital. Thankfully, he survived with no

permanent damage, but this ended up affecting me right before the first exam in

Neuroanatomy. Failing the first exam set me up for a big uphill climb in the class, so

Neuroanatomy became my focus in tutoring with Charlie. Unfortunately, I did not pass

Neuroanatomy, which led to my second semester not achieving a GPA of 3.0.

During winter break, I had a dismissal hearing with Dr. Deb, Dr. Andraka, Dr.

Haines, and my advisor, Dr. Sung. This dismissal hearing was a time that I used to

reflect on myself to realize what went wrong and how I wanted to change things moving

forward. This was a very difficult time for myself as I was never used to struggling or

failing. Self-reflecting allowed me to realize that school had to be my number one

priority, my social life and family had to come second while I am in school. Furthermore,

I learned I needed to have better self-disciplinary, reach out for help, and study with

different classmates.

Thankfully, I was able to get a new contract and go part-time starting spring

semester. Although, it was very discouraging to not move forward with my class full

time, I was grateful to still be apart of the program that I worked so hard to get into. My

goal for spring semester was to implement all the changes I wrote down. I met with an

academic counselor in the HP that taught me new techniques to study and take notes,

which I implemented right away. I was still able to have Charlie as my tutor and I

reached out to different people in my cohort to study. I ended the spring semester doing

much better than the previous two semesters.

As I reflect on this entire first year, I realize that this year was my greatest

professional and personal development. Failing a class and having the dismissal

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hearing may have been the specific moment in the academic year where it challenged

me to reflect and change my ways. The materials and artifacts I chose for my portfolio

represent the growth of my professional development throughout the year. My grade

reports show my struggle since beginning the program, but my artifacts, including my

grades on each one, show my growth artifact by artifact and semester by semester.

Having a tutor and other resources helped facilitate my learning, but I think a few

things constrained my learning. Having two professors for a course that did not believe

in the same techniques was difficult, especially on practical exams. Additionally, there

have been topics that seem to be out of date from my personal experience as a

Rehabilitation Technician. I think this is a constraint to my learning as I am not learning

the most up-to date techniques. Other constraints were some classes being straight

memorization and book work, which hindered me as I am a hands-on learner. My

biggest challenge has been overcoming the testing format used here in the program.

This has been one of my biggest challenges academically as I have testing anxiety,

which hinders me during practical examinations and because having the options of A

and C and All the above easily tricked me up and cause me to second guess myself

frequently.

Moving forward into the summer semester 2018, I think I need to continue to

work on self-disciplinary to continue to improve my personal and professional

development. I have become better at saying “no” to activities when I need to study, but

this will always be a temptation for me. I should further develop my organizational skills

and planning things out instead of going with the flow. Regarding my professional

development, I intend to continue to utilize my new study techniques and ask for help

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when I need it. I plan to keep school as my number one priority by staying focused and

blocking out distractions. I took on the responsibility of being Treasurer for PTSO and

am looking forward to the opportunity. My biggest goal for the next year is to get off

academic probation and raise my GPA above 3.0.