Exploring Therapeutic Recreation: A Personal Journey

Standing Our Ground
When I tell people that my major is Therapeutic Recreation, most often I get confused look followed by the question “what is that?” I tell them it’s simply goal orientated leisure and recreational activities. That explanation is then normally followed by the question “Well what job can you do with a therapeutic recreation major?”. My reply is always simply “many”. There are many reasons why I believe Therapeutic Recreation is a useful and meaningful career path including personal relevance, my future career aspirations, and the fulfillment of helping others.
Ever since my freshman year of high school I have known that I want to work somewhere in the health field, but not as a nurse or doctor. One day during my sophomore year, we had a Pediatric Occupational Therapist come do a presentation in my health science career class and right away I fell in love with the idea of playing with children

From there I participated in the running start program in order to graduate high school with my AA. Next, I came here Eastern Washington University because they were one of the few schools in Washington that had an Occupational Therapy Master’s program. Before I could enroll in the Occupational Therapy program I had to first obtain my bachelors in some topic. At first I thought about exercise science or athletic training but neither of those majors really fit with my career aspirations and my dream of working in a hospital or related facility. After some digging I finally stumbled across the Therapeutic Recreation major. Right away I saw how Therapeutic Recreation and Occupational Therapy could be closely related and how both provided an amplitude of different opportunities within each specialty. Both career paths allow for