This past week in ISM has been a monumental one: I fully completed and turned in my Original Work project. The purpose of this assessment is to reflect upon my project in its entirety. I am overall very proud of myself for accomplishing my project, and I look forward to utilizing the data I collected to benefit athletes of all kinds.
I came up with my Original Work project idea through a few different experiences that all came together into one idea, an idea that I turned into an experiment to test my theory. The first experience was the tearing of my anterior cruciate ligament (ACL) which required six and a half months of intensive physical therapy for my knee, during which I learned a lot about physical therapy and beneficial exercises for the knee and also discovered my interest in the profession. The second experience was actually a multitude of conversations with my sister, friends, and teammates from both high school and club soccer. These conversations were centered around their nagging injuries that were painful enough to bother them constantly. Everyone I spoke to was a soccer player, and with this constant I was able to notice a few common trends in both the injuries they were describing and the exercises they were doing in attempt to prevent and eliminate the pain.
My Original Work reflects extensive research and knowledge of my topic through the choosing of my eight exercises. I spent days reaching out to every soccer player I knew in order to have a conversation with them about their annoying injuries and what (if anything) they were doing to prevent it. I also spent many hours researching online for other expert opinions and demonstrations of the exercises. My eight exercises that I chose to do reflect my extensive research that led me to the most crucial decision of my project. This project also reflects my knowledge of physical therapy as I spent eight weeks exploring exercises that benefit soccer players that were accompanied by two of my Research Assessments that were intended to further my knowledge about certain common injuries.
Easily the most difficult part of my Original Work was how labor intensive it was. It was very physically demanding, and there were many days throughout the eight weeks where I wanted nothing more than to take a day off. Forcing myself to stick with my program in order to get the most accurate results possible was far more difficult than any other part of my project, but it was more than worth it in the end knowing that my data is going to be as accurate as possible. I am proud of myself for being able to maintain my regime, despite how physically rigorous it was at times.
My Original Work serves a real-world learning purpose for soccer players and their communities, and the goal is to expand it to all athletes and their respective communities. My data and results are intended to inspire other soccer players to learn how to strengthen themselves and prevent further injury by getting rid of those nagging injuries through the use of proper physical therapy. This will help the soccer community to learn more about how their sport affects their bodies and how they can take steps to prevent it from leaving permanent damage.
I grew both personally and professionally through my project as I had to hold myself accountable and responsible for completing my experiment every single day. I truly believe that completing this project has made me a much better at problem solving and tackling challenges head on. I’ve grown a lot and become a much more motivated and confident individual through my Original Work, both personally and professionally.
Going through the process of developing my Original Work has prepared me for completing my Final Project in two ways. The first way is that I am now very confident that I will be able to keep up with all of the requirements and deadlines throughout the assignment. The second is that, after centering my Original Work around soccer, I have learned that for my Final Project I want to expand my knowledge to all athletes and their injuries. It has also helped me to realize that I want my Final Project to be something that will make the data I gathered and the research I plan to conduct easily accessible for anyone who needs it.
To raise the bar for myself on my Final Project, one thing that I have decided to do differently is to adopt a less physically demanding idea and try for something more mentally demanding. This time around, I want to do a lot more research in order to further my knowledge about physical therapy. By the end of my Final Project, I hope to have developed both a physical and mental idea of what physical therapy truly is.
I am very proud of my Original Work project, the data I collected, and the conclusions that I came to. My overarching goal of becoming a physical therapist is simply to help people who need it, and I truly believe the information I gathered will help with this and I am more than excited to make that happen.