My current major, Physical Therapy, is a career path that is steadily growing and always has a constant demand. Within the past few years, schools have made it impossible to get a master's in physical therapy, leaving students with the option of getting either an associate's, bachelor's, or doctorate in physical therapy. There is absolutely no wrong with being a Physical Therapist Assistant but physical therapist assistants lack some of the skills that Physical Therapists have. Some of these skills are dry needling and cupping. These are techniques that only Physical Therapists are allowed to do. Dry needling is a technique that is often used in areas where it is hard to do manual work in order to get to the patient's source of pain, dry needling is used in order to relax muscles that are tensed up and spasmatic causing patients extreme pain. Cupping is another technique that is used in order to relax a patient's muscles. These techniques are also commonly used before physical therapy is done in order to relax the muscles and make the exercises easier for the patient. This service is often something that many patients are interested in but do not get due to the fact that it is sometimes not covered by insurance, and also the fact that most clinics only have one PT on duty, therefore causing patients to have to wait in order to get the service. My career goal is to get my bachelor's or associates in physical therapy assistant. I then plan to continue my education and get my doctorate in physical therapy. (D.PT). By getting my doctorate I will be giving patients more chances to get techniques applied to them that are usually not easily available. I believe that if these techniques were able to be done by physical therapy assistants then more people would be interested in it, due to the fact that the wait time would not be as long, since most clinics have multiple PTA's on duty and only one Physical Therapist. I think that by becoming a doctor of physical therapy a will be able to help more patients in a way that is not often offered.

I feel that in my lifetime I have had quite a few hard situations that I've had to overcome. Though the situations are different, they occurred within the timeline so I will include them in this essay. during my summer before 6th grade my life was changed forever when my mother passed away from cancer, forcing me to move from my small hometown of Purcell, OK to the big city of Oklahoma City, OK. during this time not only was I coping with the loss of my mother but also had to learn a new school and make all new friends. I thought that life was about as rough as it could get, but a few months later I was hit with yet another hardship. My uncle has passed away also this was someone that I was very close with and saw on a daily basis. this added yet another stressor to my life I had not fully healed and coped with the passing of my mother. Before I knew it, within a year and six months not only had my mother passed away, but also my uncle, grandmother, and father. This was so much death in a short period of time that I became physically and emotionally numb. It became extremely hard for me to express emotions, even happy ones. I was put into therapy to help cope with all the losses I had just endured. This was a big help, but college was yet another stressor and it caused me to go into yet another depressive episode, this one being the worst I had ever had. For many, they would ask "if college is such a stressor then why not drop out or change to an easier major?" I always answer "because this is something that I not only want to accomplish for myself but also for my mother and other passed relatives. I would want them to see me get this far in life and be proud of me. College is important to me because it is something that my mother did not get to experience so I know that she would want me to get an experience that she did not. My now parental, my aunt, also went to college completely free of debt or loans. this was because she got financial aid and also completed and got many scholarships. This is something that both I and her do for me, and so far I have been successful in going to college completely debt-free. I am currently going to college for physical therapy and will be going into my junior year this fall 2022 semester. I choose physical therapy as my career path due to my passion for community service and helping people. I think that no matter what someone looks like on the outside, there could be anything happening in their life and a small gesture could change their day, week, month, or year depending on the situation. I am a strong advocate for helping people when you gave them the ability and by being a physical therapist I would not only be helping people in my community, I would be helping people in my community get back to their normal selves and ability. I also hope to be able to in the future make a scholarship on my behalf for people who have lost multiple family members in a short span of time.

You're walking around your new college campus organization fair, browsing through the clubs, and activities when one catches your eye. It's a sorority, and from the looks of it, one that you would actually fit into. But just when you think you’ve found a perfect club, you see the yearly activities calendar..mommy-daughter dance, donuts with dad, Grandparents day... all events that you couldn’t attend because those people were gone from your life. I was [age] when I lost the first important person in my life, my Mom. She had Cancer, but they said it could be cured. But the reality of seeing her ring the ‘Last chemo treatment’ bell was quickly taken away when she went to the hospital one day and didn’t get to come home. It was long after that, maybe a month, maybe less, but within a short time I was crying on my best friend's couch screaming that it couldn’t be true. But that was only the beginning. After the passing of my Mom, I had to move from my small hometown of Purcell, OK to the big, bustling city of Oklahoma City, OK. It was my 6th-grade year and I had no friends and I was still adjusting to not having a mother. As if that was hard enough, I came home from school one day just to be informed that my Uncle had passed away...then a few months later my grandma...and then again, but this time it was my dad. It happened pretty fast actually, within a year and 6 months I had lost my Mom, Dad, Uncle, and Grandma, all the people that held my life together. I’m 20 now, and just starting my Sophomore year of college. Despite all my losses, I’d say I'm doing pretty well. I have quite a few best friends, I’m working, and all my classes are going great. But it didn’t just get better with time, it took effort, therapy, and a lot of thinking to figure out how I was going to keep going without some of the most important people in my life. When I was in the process of trying to overcome all of this, I thought “Why do I want to keep going?”, “What’s keeping me going?” That’s when it hit me in the head, like a deer in the headlights, I was doing it all for them. For my Mom, my Dad, my Uncle, my Grandma. It was all for them. I became devoted to doing everything that I did in honor of them. When I made it into the Honor Band, it was for my Mom because she always wanted me to play an instrument. When I made an A on a test it was for my Uncle and Grandma, they always knew I was smart. But when I picked my major, Physical Therapy, it was for all of them. They would want me to do something that would change lives, bring people back to who they used to be, give people their strength back. So that’s what I’m doing. I’m waking up every day intending to make them happy, to make them smile while watching me in heaven. I didn’t get here on my own, it took help, and most of it came from my Aunt who took me in after my mom passed. Without her, I have no idea where I would be, but I know it wouldn’t be where I am right now.

A time when I did something bold was when I went to London and Paris with my band my junior year of High School. We were in Paris when a large swarm of pigeons began flying and landing on my group. we found out that it was because a guy who lived nearby would feed them everyday, and they now thought that everyone would feed them. This was super cool because usually people associate pigeons with taking your food or using the bathroom on you, but they were super chill and I also got some super awesome photos from it!!

My name is Precious Roundtree and mental health is something that I started struggling with at the beginning of 6th grade, I am now a sophomore in college. My journey with mental health began after I lost my mother, and many other close family members within a year and 6 months. My struggle with mental health started when I noticed that anxiety accompanied me basically with everything during my daily life. During that time I noticed that I had also started showing signs of depression too. My Aunt, who was now my parental guardian, had assigned me a therapist directly after the deaths, so I was grateful to have someone to talk to. My mental health was rocky throughout most of my middle school years and then seemed to stabilize during my high school years. It was during my Freshman year of college that It seemed to hit me the hardest. I was faced with being away from home, trying to make new friends, and deal with the COVID pandemic all at once. My mental health declined rather fast, and a few weeks into the second semester I had completely stopped going to my classes. I knew mental health was something that needed to be talked about more openly, but it was until then that I truly realized just how much people misunderstood mental health struggles. During my college mental health crisis, I reach out multiple times to family, friends, and even teachers at certain times. The thing that seemed to be the same each time I reached out was that every single person I reached out to disregarded my cry for help. The people that hurt me most being my friends, and teachers coming in at a close second. The reason that I was so affected by my teacher's disregard for my mental health was that my college preaches on how they are there for you no matter what you need, so I was surprised when my call for help when unnoticed by the very people preaching about mental health. This did nothing but escalate my current crisis that I was having. The few classes that I did attend virtually, I had also stopped attending and I spent most of my time in my room. During these times was when my friends began to worry about me, but at that point, I felt my mental health was too far gone, and disregarded their efforts. I had stopped eating overall, or I would binge eat until I got sick. For the classes that I missed, I emailed my teachers to try and get my work, and the classes that didn’t have work I emailed to let them know why I was absent. Through all of this, I still let people know why I was absent or not communicating, although I felt like no one cared if I was alive or not. The result of my Freshman year mental health crisis was a complete turnaround in how I see mental health. My GPA was the lowest that it has been despite my best efforts to get my work in and telling every one of my teachers about my declining mental health. In the end, it was my teachers that disappointed and failed me the most. I had thought that they would be the main ones to support me and help me through it all, but it turns out that they were the main ones to disregard my problem out of everyone I went to. From this, I have started gaining awareness for college campus mental health. I believe that it is extremely important for college campuses to have mental health support in counselors and the teachers and professors too. When college campuses start having real mental health awareness is when people will stop having to go through the same thing that I suffered through just my freshman year of college.

The songs in my playlist are based off of Sunday Best by Surfaces, a light and bubbly song that talks of how you should feel happy even though life has its up and downs. The playlist that I have curated includes songs that represent both the good and bad days in life. The playlist carries a calm and reassuring vibe, good for listening to when just relaxing or taking a small hiatus in the middle of the day or the week.