Clear Horizons

Mentor Interview
Why Physical Therapy

Jak Mundt
ISM
Mrs. Zehentner
Oct. 5, 2023
Summary:
My mentor (Mr. Travis) talks about the main ways of becoming a physical therapist as well as his

personal opinions of the job. Firstly, he had to do a lot of schooling in order to become a physical

therapist. It takes 4 years of school to get your bachelors then it takes 3 more years of not only

physical therapy school, but also volunteering and interning. Despite the fact that there is a lot of

schooling, it is still a pretty competitive field, but if you would like to make it less competitive

then just try and have a high GPA and really try when you’re writing application essays and

things similar to that. Then, he goes into talking about his opinion on his job. He says that he

loves the social interactions and how each patient has some different going on with them. He

loves to solve problems with one of his favorite subjects being math, which if he was not a

physical therapist, Travis said he would pursue engineering because of his love for math. Finally,

he speaks of the tribulations he went through. He had already been married prior to his years of

college, so he had a lot of family he had to attend to and a lot of business to conduct with his

wife, so he couldn’t really just focus on just school. Throughout the interview I was thinking for

myself how it would go for me, and physical therapy is still something that I might pursue.
 Why Physical Therapy
In retrospect, the journey to becoming a physical therapist seems easy when you directly

compare it to the journey of something like a cardiothoracic surgeon, but each of them has their

pros and cons. 8-10 years of schooling may seem worth it to make about $400,000 annually, but

is it really something a social person would want to do? Cardiothoracic surgeons would just be

seeing patient after patient looking at and repairing people’s hearts without really getting to know

them. Are they really repairing their patient’s heart if they don’t even know their patient by their

own heart or vice versa? A social person, such as my mentor Mr. Travis who’s been in physical

therapy for 5 years, prefers to get to know their patients and help them in the long run instead of

a quick fix up. Mr. Travis loves what he does because he simply loves helping other people and

he expressed it by stating “you get to see a lot of different people from a lot of different

backgrounds and a lot of different injuries too so it's it's usually never boring that's probably my

favorite part of the job.”

Now cardiothoracic surgery is only being used as an example of a career where one

doesn’t have to be too social to get patients, they’re more so assigned by other doctors when

cardiothoracic surgery is necessary. Yes, interning is still required among other things, but it’s

still a separate journey from physical therapy. It’s a minimum of 8 years of school while physical

therapy can be a minimum of 6 years. According to Mr. Travis “If I had to do it all over again

PTA is only a 2 year program,” so nowadays it’s a lot shorter than it was. Unfortunately,

cardiothoracic surgeons have a very specific field they have to study, so if they wanted to pursue

a different career while still being in the medical field because they didn’t like cardiothoracic

surgery, then they would have to almost restart. On the other hand, a person studying physical

therapy wouldn’t have to go back as far because it’s a broader career when you study the overall
health of the human body and then specialize in a certain type of physical therapy for only a

couple years. On average, cardiothoracic surgeons also make more than an unspecialized

physical therapist but a specialized physical therapist can make double what an unspecialized

one can.

The biggest part of why my mentor chose to be a physical therapist was because of the

social aspect of it. He loves people no matter how they treat him and he’s always willing to help

no matter the circumstance. He says that the hardest part is “Probably all the paperwork all the

documentation requirements that go along with with patient care and then all the administrative

stuff that we have to do outside of the clinic since we're affiliated with hospitals so meetings and

trainings and things that have nothing to do with physical therapy that we’re required to

complete is probably the the hardest part of this job,” which when observing them it seemed like

they breezed right through it. Mr. Travis also explained how the job can be stressful “depending

on the quarter” and how busy they are during said quarter, but other than that one can infer that

he enjoys what he does because when he’s asked if he has any regrets with his career he directly

says “Not in the context of I don't like what I do.”

Since my mentor is a very social person and has a lot of similarities to me, this career

field could definitely be something I pursue in the future. It has a lot of the things I personally

enjoy learning about now. I would have to be educated on mainly anatomy, but also other parts of

the medical field such as how diet affects the muscles and bones in the body, which I’m already

passionate in studying both. I could take these into my personal life to help me with aches and

pains as well as other health issues that don’t necessarily include musculature such as stomach

issues and resistance to viruses. Being social and learning about people is also something I love

doing, so physical therapy is something I’d be comfortable with doing for the rest of my life.
 Works Cited
Travis, Ceccacci. Personal Interview. 5 October 2023