I love my job. Most days I don't even think of it as a job. However, there are those days when I leave home before the sun comes up, deal with traffic, mounds of paperwork, evaluate a fractured wrist, more paperwork, practice in the rain and come home long after the sun has set and I think that there has got to be something better.
Athletic training is a challenging, interesting and demanding profession that is definitely not for the weak at heart. We are often everything to everyone all the time and it is ingrained in us that this is what athletic trainers are. We lower our heads, we work tirelessly and go home to our families at the end of the day exhausted.
What do I love? I LOVE my student-athletes (most of them ;)) who are always so impressed when I use a medical term. I LOVE my student athletic trainers who I watch develop a love of athletic training despite their designation sometimes as "water girl." I LOVE the feeling of success I get when I watch an student-athlete return to the playing field after a year off due to surgery or major injury, or a week off due to a high ankle sprain. I LOVE when a former student-athlete or student athletic trainer visits the athletic training room during halftime at homecoming to tell me they are studying sports medicine at college and anatomy is HARD. There are so many more.
What do I love not so much? While I tend not to dwell on things like this, there are a few things that frustrate me. I don't love my growing list of duties: travel coordinator, meal planner, insurance agent, safety trainer, compliance director, equipment manager, and sometime-athletic secretary just to name a few. I don't love the often ridiculous practice schedules that keep me here 12+ hours just to ensure practice time on the "main gym floor." (They are both wood, get a grip!?). I don't love hosting tournaments of anything, or staggered practice over Thanksgiving, Christmas and Spring Break.
To me, the positives far outweigh the negatives, AND it is in my power to address the things I do not love so much. It was difficult just starting out to realize that I don't have to keep my mouth shut and just show up, I can elicit change. I addressed the practice issues with my coaches and they agreed to work-out within a certain window during the school day and on holidays or be satisfied with no athletic trainer on campus (no coach wants that!). I'm still working on my increasing job responsibilities and I won't win the tournament battle. It is good to know, however, that I can win some battles, and that is something else I LOVE.
I want to start a discussion...In the comments section of this post:
What do you love about your job?
What would you change?
One I'd really like to know the answer to: What can SWATA and the YPC do to help?
1 comment:
These are a few of my favorite things:
I love walking down the hallways at school and kids high-fiving me and calling out my name from across the way. It makes me feel like a celebrity!
I love when a student returns from college and says..."you know something, Fousty, you were right! College is hard! but I know so much from taking your class!" So, so awesome!
I love talking to parents who are so appreciative of me doing rehab for their kids..."for free."
I love to learn and study. Dorky, I know, but I do love to go to the books when I don't know something. There is always something new and amazing about the human body. I could go to college my whole life.
I actually love paperwork. Again, I'm a dork, but organization and neatness makes me happy. A good, neat database or filing cabinet makes me feel so accomplished.
I love rehab. Simply put, its my favorite. And I love everything about it...making up new exercises, hanging out with the athlete and creating a bond with that kid, encouraging kids to do more than they thought they could, teaching them how their body is healing, and, of course, when it is successful and a kid is back to playing, that is pretty awesome.
I do not love the way I hobble out of bed in the morning, my feet sore from being up all day the day before.
I do not love watching at the same football drills everyday.
I do not love how I take care of everyone's body and don't have the time and energy to do the same for myself.
I do not love being the lone female in a male world of football and how that somehow makes me less valuable.
I do not love drug testing. Watching kids pee is never on anyone's priority list.
One thing that the YPC can do for us, is continue to teach assertiveness in the professional workplace. Being able to approach your peers and your bosses to negotiate practice and/or travel coverage is imperative. When you are young, that role is so scary and difficult, but standing up for yourself as a professional is so important. Too many YP's try to please early on, taking on way too many "other duties as assigned" and then get stuck in a trap they won't ever get out of. The role of athletic trainer easily becomes abused. We want to do whatever it takes to be successful, but we need to recognize that by saying no to picking up trash in the gym or setting up the football field for practice or whatever the case maybe, saying Yes takes away from your role as a health professional.
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