Gymnasticon

There are over seven billion people living in the world. You never know who you will meet and how they will impact the way you go about your day. Meeting a student from Hanze University expanded the way I thought about physical therapy, education, and life in another country. In my second interview with Alexandra, I got a taste of the life of a physical therapist in the Netherlands. She and I sent pictures to one another and set up a skype interview to discuss them. It is interesting to see what life was like for her and this was evident in the pictures she sent me. While we were describing our pictures to one another and throughout this experience as a whole, I learned several lessons that will benefit me in the future. Immediately I noticed how similar both the Hanze physiotherapy program is with the Mount’s DPT program. Her first two photos were of her and her classmates. Both affirm that physical therapy is a hands-on profession whether it is on a skeleton or on each other. This, in itself, is a lesson that I have learned through the course of this experience. No matter how much I thought the United States was unique in the practice of physical therapy, health professions have the same goal in mind: to become experts on movement and the human body, and to use this knowledge to optimize movement in the community. Her classmates physically touch each other to understand how muscles run and how deviations from the norm can hinder activities and participation in…