Hello! Recently, I interviewed one of the TA's in my taping and bracing class. I interviewed a junior in the Athletic Training Program here at MSU. I wanted to get an insight on the field and what the next steps I have to look forward to and what his plans for the future are and what he wants to do in this field.
First off, I interviewed Jonah Taykowski. He is a junior from Macomb Michigan and it is his first year in the program. When you are in the program, you are assigned to different sports teams on campus and the surrounding areas. In the fall, he was with football and this spring he is working with Dewitt High School. When I asked him why he chose to become an athletic trainer, I found out he had very similar reasons to me. He told me that he initially wanted to be a sports medicine doctor but wasn't into the idea of going to school for another 10 years. Sports has always been something he has participated in. In high school, he was a three-sport student athlete, like I was, and was frequently hurt and in the athletic training room, also like I was. He decided on athletic training as he got to know his athletic trainer at his high school. Jonah shadowed his athletic trainer and really got to see the insides to the field and what a typical day was like. He wanted to still be around medicine and sports so this worked out to be a good compromise of the two.
After graduating from Michigan State, Jonah wants to go to graduate school and get his masters in athletic training. His end goal is to be a certified athletic trainer at the collegiate or professional setting.
I asked him if there was any advice or tips he could give someone who wants to go into athletic training. His number one piece of advice was to ask questions. With athletic training being a hands-on field, you learn through practicing and learning through practice and first-hand experiences. If you don't understand or can't quite get one step to a tape job, then the whole tape job is messed up. When you go into your first clinical setting, you will be nervous. Your preceptors know this and are there to help you. Asking questions will help you and show them that you are there to learn and do a good job. Another huge piece of advice is you get out what you put into it. Athletic training is a large time commitment especially when going through these clinical observations. If you go into the day dreading being there than it is going to be a bad experience where as if you go into the with an open mind and looking forward to every learning opportunity, than it is going to be a great experience and you'll benefit from it in the future. More times than not, you will be thrown into something that you've never seen or experienced before so being able to ask questions and be alert and ready to learn and apply those skills that you have been practicing will be a major component to your success.
At the end of our interview, I asked him what the hardest part of being in the program has been so far. He responded with applying the skills int he clinical setting and being able to detect what should happen at the right time. With athletic training having such a wide spectrum of skills and principles, you are continuously learning and finding new ways to do the same things so being open to change and being able to adapt to new ways is hard but so rewarding. Again, Jonah reiterated that in 5 years he hopes to be out of graduate school with his masters and hopefully has a job with a college or professional team.
I hope my interview with Jonah has brought some insight into the field as it did for me. I know other fields like kinesiology can be very different while some could be just the same. The basics are the same though. For each field you go into, you can memorize all the terms, anatomy, basic outline, any detail really but applying it to the real world will be the most challenging thing you will do. Thank you!
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