For those in their program already, do you all have fieldwork classes every semester? If so, are they useful to you? Ours are just full of busy work and pretty much just an excuse for the school to charge us for an extra credit each semester. Frustrating...
Coursework & Fieldwork Do all schools have fieldwork CLASSES every semester? Useful?
- Thread starter Johann00
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We don't have the traditional fieldwork the first year - our level I fieldwork occurs in the the first and second semesters of our second academic year (along with coursework), and then our level II fieldwork happens over the summer after that second year, and the following fall, during which time we no longer have other courses. However, during this first year, we have something called Community Application, where we go out to a site with a facilitator for a sort of 'pre-fieldwork' experience. I personally did not feel like I got a lot out of this semester's experience since we hadn't covered all of the material that would have been useful by the time we were expected to use it during the site visits; this was due to the way they structured it this year, and they have now realized this is an issue. We also did not pick our sites, and I personally did not have much interest in the site to which I was assigned, though other students were sent to different sites that they enjoyed. I also know that scheduling was a big problem for a lot of people. So overall, no, I did not find it particularly useful this semester. However, I do not expect this to be the same with my actual Level I and II fieldwork experiences.
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We have it every semester. I find it very helpful in terms of integrating what you learn at school (there are assignments associated with the fieldwork). And you get to have a peek on what the practice is like. I mean we all did observations before we applied for sure but the experience is still different. We are charged for 1 credit hour for 12 hours of fieldwork and 1.5 hours of weekly class time (discussions etc).
I think we're talking about different things; I'm sure every school runs things a little differently. Yes, the actual fieldwork experiences (when you're out at a site working with an OT) is great. What I'm talking about is the in-class fieldwork courses we're required to take. During our first year, all we did in the FW classes was take personality questionnaires and talk about how our leadership styles might be different from other people we'll work with later on. It's been really frustrating to me how pointless they were. Sounds like the programs you two are in have figured out how to integrate this material in a more interesting way than mine has...
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Yes, my program has the 1 credit FW each of the first four semesters. I just am finishing up the first one. It hasn't been the most helpful class, but it does give us time to discuss fieldwork and also work on some clinical reasoning skills.
