If you have a knack for being outdoors and wanting to travel, you have probably considered doing travel therapy at some point.
What is travel therapy? It's where you take ~13 weeks contracts in various parts of the country (or the world if you're lucky!) doing your profession!
I had toyed with this idea in grad school but there were so many terrifying things holding me back - I'm a new grad, what if I don't have a mentor?, the lack of certainty and constant unknown, what if there aren't any jobs, oh and uh MOVING EVERY THREE MONTHS.
Those were my fears - maybe they are yours too. And honestly, these were still my fears up until finally committing to the decision to do travel therapy. But I'm challenging myself to embrace the unknown, live life, and chase after dreams. After all, it's a matter of mindset - do I want to go after something, or do I want to sit and wonder "what if?".
One main factor for me was work/life balance. There wasn't really a lot of things to do outdoors where I was living, and if there was it was a couple hours away. I would come home from work and be very tired, maybe burnt out at times, but it was hard to re-invest back into myself. I don't share this to have a pity party for myself - it was just the fact of life and that's ok because it's brought me here! The greatest thing I got involved with during my time was our adaptive sports community; it makes me sad that I didn't know about it sooner but I realized a new passion was unlocked and I hope to continue working with this community in my travels.
I also had this idea that in order to be a good OT I needed to work at a hospital and invest 100% of who I am in order to succeed. Not a healthy mindset but I think that in grad school and even once you're out in the field that "rise and grind" mindset can be prominent and overshadow the motivation behind the work we do. One day I realized that I don't want to just work my life away and then die. Dramatic? Maybe a little tbh. However, I knew there had to be a way to go be OT and not feel like a sponge being rung out.
That's when travel therapy popped back up on the radar. I had gotten to a point in my OT career where I was confident enough in my skills that I was ok going to a new place with limited mentorship every 3 months. I also wanted to challenge myself as a clinician, try out a new setting or treating a different population in order to expand my skills to ultimately help my clients. And of course...wanting to eat tacos in cool places.
To be clear - I understand that working as an OT is still going to come with stress, challenges, etc as a traveller just like in would in a permanent job. However, I think the perspective will be different and the access to more life enriching experiences will help with that balance.
I did a heck of a lot of research before committing to this - research I plan to share in future posts to help guide anyone interested in travel therapy and hopefully continue to provide transparency on the process!
So why travel therapy? Because I wanted a change
Why now? My answer is why not now? As they say, if not now, then when?
Talk soon!
Taylor
@The.Kozey.OT
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