Occupational Therapy Reflection Paper

In this paper, I will be reflecting on my first year as an Occupational Therapy student at the University of The Witwatersrand. While preparing to write this paper, I have come to realise that my viewpoint and understanding of the profession of Occupational Therapy and the importance of occupation to Occupational Therapy have developed exponentially throughout this year. My previous understanding of OT and occupations in OT was very basic and shallow compared to what I understand of this topic currently. This growth in understanding has come about as a result of many learning events such as lectures, fieldwork and activities. However, two of the most significant learning events I have personally experienced this year have had a major impact

Since I feel that Occupational therapy is my most valuable course this year at university, not achieving a satisfactory mark in this exam disappointed me but also gave me the motivation and desire to do better in this course and pushed me to work harder towards my goals and desired marks. As we learnt in our Introduction to Psychology course, according to Atkinson in 1966, a person is motivated to avoid failure and this motivation is determined by three considerations, one being the need to avoid failure and the need to achieve, two being the person’s estimation of the chance of failure at a particular task and three being the incentive or the value of the failing of the specific task which is how unpleasant or disappointing it would be to fail at this task (Welch, 2015). These motivational aspects specifically apply to my learning experience as my motivation towards this course has significantly increased after my unsatisfactory result in my June exam. After this event, I have since reflected on how I study, my motivation behind doing this degree and how I will improve my knowledge in order to reach my goal of being successful in this course. I have since changed my work ethic, I revise my work more often and I feel more encouraged to work

This activity was done as our APT task, in which we use disposable materials such as cardboard boxes, newspaper and wallpaper glue in order to make cost-effective, individually designed furniture or other objects for use and creativity. APT is a very versatile technique and is very beneficial for people with disabilities as it can be fitted well to an individual and can be tailored for each person. For our task, we had to make a chair which would be used for an individual child who suffers from Cerebal Palsy and Microcephaly in order for him to be able to sit up and provide support fitted to his body. This will aide his mother in feeding him, and to allow the child access to resources previously not accessible to him. This chair allowed us to make our first object designed for a particular individual and in our case, a 10 month-old baby named Ayabonga. The fact that this chair was going to be used and because it would be helpful to an individual, pushed the whole group to work harder and also pushed us to put a maximum amount of effort into this chair. After making the structure, and since the chair was going to Ayabonga and we had previously learnt that he enjoyed soft toys and other sensational stimuli, we made our chair fit not only his physical proportions, but we made our chair personal and interactive with buttons, different textures, teddy