EXPECTATIONS...

Today was our first day in the community of Mariannridge. Waking up this morning I didn’t know what to expect but for the first time ever I felt a sense of peace on the first day of prac. We climbed out the bus in Mariannridge and walked towards Ridge Café and the MCC (Mariannridge community council) offices. Nobody was there waiting for us. Everyone just carried on around us like we were invisible…. This is somewhat different to what has been happening the last few years were we are met by an OT or someone who is in charge at the hospital or wherever we doing our prac and our supervisor is there asking us questions and laying out the expectations. Quite the opposite of what happened this morning. At that moment I felt lost and wasn’t sure what to do, but after some time we ‘forced’ ourselves in by going and introducing ourselves to whoever was around and taking a walk up to the school and getting involved with the groups that were running. When I was driving home this afternoon I started thinking about what had happened this morning. We are so used to structure and being told what we must do. We have always known what our supervisors and clients are expecting from us. But I don’t believe community block is not going to be like that. We have to look for things now. It’s not clear cut, there are no ‘specified’ roles for an OT in a community. It’s up to us to find our role and not only do we need to find it but we need to find a way to fill those roles too. It’s going to take one heap load of confidence and trust in myself something that has been my downfall during my three years of studies thus far. So then I asked myself why am I not nervous and worried if this block is asking of me something that I lack? The only thing that I could put it down to is that the expectations and pressure now in this block are no longer coming from our supervisors that greet us at the door on our first day. This block to me has no academic pressure…... It has real pressure, it has people pressure- how can I help these people? What do they need? What can I give them? What’s going on in this community? And that’s the pressure that drives me because I care about and love people more than anything in this world. I’m tired of academics. I’m ready to just be a human being and use myself as a resource.