• In what areas have you experienced the greatest personal and professional learning and

development during this academic year? 

I have gained confidence in my knowledge and myself. I believe I have begun to be more

confident in my answers even if it turns out not to be the right answer. I tend to doubt myself

when I hear others discussing a topic that I thought I knew but are describing it differently. It

makes me begin to doubt myself. I had a roundabout journey to get into PT school but I knew

once I was accepted I would do well because I always had. I knew that I wouldn’t be a perfect A

student anymore but I had not realized that I would have to revamp how I studied. I completed a

Master program with a 4.0 and PT school was still a whirl wind to get use to. Prior to PT school I

had never made my own study guides for a test. I feared that I would have incorrect information

or not be able to pull out what the important concepts were. Starting in the fall of 2021 I began

making study guides for test in certain courses that required a lot of reorganizing of material to

have it all in one place. I have a white board calendar at home that I place all test an assignment

on for the month. I wouldn’t say by any means that I was an unorganized person prior to PT

school however, it allowed me to stay on track and determine when I needed to start studying for

upcoming test.

During my first clinical I was able to continue to build confidence in working with

patients, and was able to improve building trust with them quickly. I was able to begin to feel

what some deficits feel like, or see what actual diagnoses look like from a patient experiencing it.

This was a great experience because prior to the clinical when working with my classmates we

had to try to act out an injury but we could not act out different end feels or deficits really well.

Being able to see how patients compensate and how the body actually creates different end feels

was a great leaning experience.

• How/Why do you feel the materials/artifacts included in your portfolio represent your learning
and development during this year? 

I choose to include what I did in my portfolio because I believe it shows the

understanding I have of the material and it also shows how I have grown in this program so far.

My confidence has been a big part of my change in my first year in the program. I am beginning

to feel more confident in the material, or even in providing an answer even if I am unsure if what

I said was correct. I also believe what I included sums up my first year in PT school very well. I

believe my grades represent my experience appropriately, and even though my spring semester

grades were a little different than the previous two, I am still proud of them because they are still

good and the semester was a little more challenging than other and I worked very hard.

• What facilitated your learning and development and what constrained it? 

I believe working in groups or partners for studying has really helped improve my

learning and confidence in knowledge. I have found who I study well with and I have learned

that I really enjoy working with others when it comes to studying for exams because we can

build off each other’s knowledge to get a full understanding. I also find having the lecture

recordings available is very nice. This is a new concept to me that I have never had available

before. Since I did well in school before I figured I would not need the lectures recorded and

made available to me. However, I would have to say that a hand full of times I have gone back to

a lecture to review a slide or two that was confusing or needed more clarification after reviewing

my notes. I do not believe very much has constrained me and my learning. I would say being in

Houghton instead of Mount Pleasant has been an interesting adjustment. We do have slightly

different equipment than in Mount Pleasant because we do not have the storage space for it I also
wish that I could sometimes ask questions after class to the professors in Mount Pleasant but it is

to challenging via Webex.

• What areas do you believe need further development and what are 

your plans for facilitating that development?

I believe that I need to continue to work on my confidence in my knowledge. It is

beginning to show with my written exam grades and my practicals. However, I feel in a practical

setting I still get very nervous and feel as though I am providing incorrect information. I know I

am not as nervous because of working hands on with a mock patient because I do believe my

patient interaction skills are in a good place. I do think that it boils down to do I know the

information or not and my head goes to what questions are they going to ask and do I know the

answer. I do know that when I get nervous or don’t know the answer to a question asked right

away that I tend to answer the question in a questioning not so confident answer and I need to

continue to work on this. I also feel as though my critical reasoning skills could use some

improvement and I do know that some of this will come with being more confident. I believe I

can improve this by preparing in advance for courses like mock where we will put our

knowledge for the week to use. I believe that sometimes I have an idea of what a patient

diagnosis maybe, but then I get stuck on where do I go from here, what do I specifically need to

measure (ROM, MMT, MLT…) and what special test need to be performed. I believe working on

my recall of knowledge will also help with this because it is more practice having to come up

with my next steps.