Wednesday, 7 March 2012

Finally!

I found out my placement! I can't say exactly where it is because of confidentiality and the like but its in a acute mental health setting which is both exciting and a tad scary! I've never worked in mental health before and I'm really looking forward to finding out all about. I spoke to the OT that will be my 'educator' for placement today and she seems really nice and it sounds like theres lots of oppurtunities! So yeah, I'm happy :) Just need to sort outwhere I can live while I'm there and do some prep work and then... can I go now?!

I also took a photo of a lovely full moon earlier but the fake SD card seem to be stuck in the slot of my laptop so i cant put the real one in a download the photos :(

Maybe tomorrow...

Sunday, 4 March 2012

happy days

Well after being down about placements you'll be pleased to know I got a whole load of good news! On thursday evening having just written my post and started to rearrange a few bits on the blog in the space of about two hours, things turned good! I heard that amazon are sending me a brand new kindle for free!! Then I got offered a job for next year! Then I was asked to write a witness statement for an accident I witnessed recently (ok maybe not great, but I was glad to know it's sorted) and then Adam arrived! So I'm back to my more happy self :)

Friday we went to one of the best shops- The Range. I could spend hours wandering around all their craft stuff... I think I might have! You can get some good scrapbooking deals in their gift bags and I managed to get all this:

For just £10, got to love a bargain! I've had a play around with it a bit but will post when I've created something worth showing.

We've also had a nice wander down the beach soaking up the sun (which I swear has a direct influence on my mood) resulting in some particulatly unispiring photography and discovered that the reason our fox is in our garden so much is because he lives there....

It was surprisingly hard to get a photo that gives an idea of the size of these burrows but they're roughly fox sized so I'm assuming he's the one that's dug them!

Thursday, 1 March 2012

Control

Well this week so far has just been stress! One of the great things and worst things about being an OT student is the placements we have randomly through our course. They're great because they remind me of the reason behind all the work I'm doing and I have met some truly inspiring people, both clients and therapists. If I'm honest I'm not sure I'd be able to sit in lectures for three years! However they are also incredibly stressful. At the moment I'm waiting to hear where I'm going. The problem is that it is the uni that organise the majority of our placements and though they try incredibly hard we still get left a month before having no clue where we are going, and considering this could be anywhere in a huge range of settings over two counties it leaves alot unknown. I guess my problem is I like to have things planned and to have them in control and when I can't I don't deal with it very well and it plays on my mind and then nothing else gets done which in turn is stressful!
But thankfully I now have a long weekend ahead of me with Adam and I'm going to do my best to forget about it, not moan too much and assume I'm not going to find out untill atleast tuesday... wish me luck!

In other news this months HTC challenge is cake pops, I'm so excited, can't wait to give it a go!


(http://babyccinokids.com/blog/2011/03/10/everyone-is-doing-them-cake-pops/)

Sunday, 26 February 2012

Spring has sprung

Well as promised I fitted in a wander with my camera between bass playing. I've never really just gone out just with the purpose of taking photos. I wasn't really in the best place for photography, just a random street near the church we were playign in really, but I'm actually quite pleased with what I found! And some time in the sun always does me good :)



I love the fact that the sun makes everything so colourful! (And the fact that my camera is fairly good at point and click!)

Saturday, 25 February 2012

Confessions

I have a confession to make... I've become slightly obsessed with browsing the realms of the blogging world and pintrest. I'm amazed how many inspiring people there are out there and I feel like i ought to be blogging about my favourites or something but right now I dont think I have any. I'm just enjoying reading and getting ideas and looking at amazing things and wanting to try some myself and not doing them because well, i'm spending all my time looking at them! It also makes blogging a bit daunting. But I think for now I'll just keep going, I havnt quite figured out what I want my blog to be yet, you can probably tell I've just written about lots of bits and peices, but it's a start.

One plan is to bring back the photos to my blog, it's been sadly lacking in the last couple of posts. I'm playing a concert thisevening and has rehersals all afternoon (and was playing another gig last night!), but somewhere in there I think I will have a play around with my camera. It's beautifully sunny today which I love. I can't wait for summer, for lieing in the garden reading my book (probably a text book), for days at the beach, for summer dresses and ice cream. Sunny photos here I come!

Wednesday, 22 February 2012

Stars

I love looking at the stars. When I've got stuff on my mind it puts it all in perspective. It's so peaceful (if your in the right place)  it makes me realise any problems of mine are tiny in comparison to everthing out there. It reminds me of a winter when I was about 15 when I walked the dog with my dad every night. He used to laugh at me attempting to walk in a straight line while looking at the stars (im incapable of it but I insist on trying) and everytime I remembered my camera it was cloudy and every time I forgot it there were stars everywhere. I remembered this today because it's the first time my cameras left my bag in the last couple of weeks and guess what... I wanted to take a picture. Guess I havn't got rid of that habit! They were good times, and when I go home now I always go walk the dog with dad at some point. It normally ends in me being pushed in a puddle, or a bramble bush, or being jumped up on from behind in the dark, or listening to awful music on radio 2... but we enjoy it and when I get back frozen, muddy or complaining about whatever dad has done I'm always in a better mood strangely! This started about stars.... ah well.. heres a memory for you!

Monday, 20 February 2012

OT

I would like to answer a question which is going to follow me for the rest of my life... 'so what is OT?'

The obvious question when you say your at uni is 'what are you studying?'. People can understanding when you say history, or art or even nursing. My answer is occupational therapy. To which I normally get a 'ooh' or a blank kind of smile and then... so whats that then?

The problem is it's pretty hard to explain. I'm not sure even most of my friends and family really know... I'm not entirely sure I do! We were talking about it in a lecture the other day and I quite liked our lecturers quote: 'It's not our fault it's so complicated!'. And thats the thing, its pretty difficult to sum up an entire career into a nice short sentence. Would a nurse be able to do it? Or a physio? The difference is people don't have a picture in their head of OT. So... For anyone passing my blog, please read on and learn a bit cause one day you might need an OT and it would be nice to know what they do.

My normal definition is 'we work with people to live independantly with illness'

An improvement I heard in discussion the other day is that 'we help people live how they want to live'. I like this, indepednance isnt the only thing we work for, it's not always possible and it's not always wanted. But we help people do what they value and what is meaningful to them and we call this occupation, be it getting dressed in the morning, having a job or going swimming. We see occupation as vital to good health. We can work in physical or mental health, with any age group. We can work in hospitals, the community, prisons, charities, schools ... you'll be surprised where we pop up! We look holistically at a person, considering their environment, their illness and its effects, their values and their goals to decide what to work on and we use a range of techniques to acheive them. eg. teaching techniques and strategies, providing equipment, groups, education, exercises, splinting... the list could go on!

I'm struggling here to define what we do because it's so broad, but I've tried and hopefully you have slightly more of an idea. Please note I am only a second year student, not qualified, please don't reference this! It's just an attempt at getting a few more people out there to understand what OT's do, because I think it's really important and the more widely OT is known, the more effective can be!

If I'm clever enough I may start a new page of my blog to continue this and give some examples.... we will see!

For further infomation http://www.cot.co.uk/ is pretty good :)