“Occupational therapy is hard to explain to people,” says Susan Becker, University of Minnesota OT graduate from the class of 1969. “I remember a joke I heard about this: ‘Physical therapy will get you ready to run a marathon and occupational therapy will make sure you have your pants on.’”
It turns out the endurance of Becker’s own OT expertise spanned more than a marathon, when she found herself applying her skills earlier this year, 50 years after she graduated from the “U”, to help someone who’s very close to her.
That person was herself.
Following complicated back surgery, Becker says she developed an infection that required more surgery, and she sustained cracked vertebrae during her transport to and from a nursing facility. The ordeal left her temporarily unable to walk, and in a rehabilitation facility. “The occupational therapists had equipment and I showed them how to do it,” she says. “I was surprised how many of the muscle names and nerves I remembered and the terminology. I must have learned it really well because it came to me 50 years later.”
When she left rehab and returned to her Chicago area home last April, she conditioned her arms to accommodate a walker, and her mobility has improved in the time since.
Becker’s ongoing passion for OT and its role in helping improve peoples’ lives began during her research for a report on the topic in 9th grade. This solidified her determination to study the field. “I thought that sounds really cool,” she said of the profession.
When she later enrolled in the University of Minnesota, her early studies focused on Classical Greek, before she entered the OT program. Now, like then, OT students approach the program with a wide variety of academic backgrounds.
And now, like then, OT graduates also apply their expertise within numerous different settings. Susan Becker chose the intersection of psychology and occupational therapy, working within several Chicago-area hospitals to help psychiatric patients with their daily living skills. Her career also involved teaching and consulting nursing homes.
Year after year, Becker chose to donate to the University of Minnesota’s Occupational Therapy Program, to “support children, whether it’s for books or some special thing they need to do.” She has also committed to support an education that continues, to this day, to remain relevant to her own life, and has no plans to stop.
“They’re in my will. I think I’ve been very blessed to have had the education I got and to do the things I’ve wanted to do in terms of working with populations. Its important to support the people who’ve supported you.”