Flexibility

As an athletic trainer, a key word in the job description needs to be "flexible". This means multiple things. Sometimes you have to be physically somewhat flexible to deal the injury and rehab situations you might be put in. But what I want to talk about today is the life schedule of an athletic trainer. Two weeks ago, we spent almost a whole week out of school, and postponing events due to the weather. This caused an absolutely ridiculous scheduling nightmare. Then we got hit again, on Wednesday, and had to push back events another day. This one weather system not only delayed the end of one sports season by two day, but our basketball teams only practiced once in two weeks, and played 4 games in one week. Because of this schedule, there were two days this past week that never even made it "to work". I was working, and on the job. One of those day, I had something previously scheduled, but then had to come back to work for a make-up event. LONG DAY!!!!!

Now I know this was a freak event, but think about normal times. At my school, I am on at least 9 other peoples time. 9 coaches basically give me and my co-workers a frame work of how we are going to schedule our lives. We only get to decide how we are going to make it work. We now all have children. I married another athletic trainer, so you have an idea of her schedule. One co-worker married a pilot, and is gone for periods of time. The other married a computer geek, that now runs major operations of a major company. She is gone a lot also.

So needless to say, we have to live and die by a schedule. And we like that schedule to be done months in advance. But we all know that we have to have some kind of flexibility so that we can all work together toward a common goal. We are lucky that we get to work as a team. There are a lot of athletic trainers that do not have that luxury. Probably more often than not. But the life of an athletic trainer pretty much revolves around other peoples lives. You joined this profession because you wanted to help others. Selflessness is at the root of this profession. But burn out is also a very real condition in the profession. When making your schedule, working around those 9 coaches, and co-workers lives, make some time for you. I call mine "Timmy Time". I try my hardest to schedule time for me to do SOMETHING ELSE. Anything else. Sometimes, I schedule time to do, NOTHING. Nothing can be the biggest something sometimes. But make time for you, your family, and friends. It will help you get by!!!!