Graduation season is coming up! How exciting for those who are graduating, including me! This is going to be a non-Christmas Christmas, because we get to justify having parents around, forcing our close friends to show up, and of course (!) receiving gifts, hahaha!

If you don't know yet, I am studying occupational therapy (OT) at USC. You said you don't know what it is?! Go and read this article of mine about OT. Also, April is OT month, so if you want to know what OT is at any time of the year, it should be now!

Now, you know what OT is and that I'm getting my bachelor's degree in OT (wink ;) wink), or you may even have a friend / relative / child / etc. graduating with their degree in OT, you might be wondering what kind of fun graduation gifts an OT student would want. Here are some gift ideas for occupational therapists, directly from an OT student (aka me):

1. Whiteboard Calendar

Whether we're going straight to the workforce after graduation or continuing to pursue more letters after our names (you know, some of us don't just want OTR/L after our names, we want that OTD/ Ph.D. and all those tongue-twisting letters!), a whiteboard calendar will be a fantastic tool for us to keep track of our assignments, deadlines, clients, caseloads, and all different sorts of errands! I'm still in school studying OT, and I need a calendar to keep me sane.

2. Journal (or other coping tools)

Feeling "burnt out" is a real thing, especially among healthcare professionals. For healthcare professionals (e.g. physical therapist, occupational therapist, case managers, psychiatrists, etc.), "burnout" happens when they are highly emotionally invested in their clients, but feel like not "enough" progress was made (very often due to the nature of clients' illness, policy or system failure, and so on). It's really disheartening when you find out a patient, whom you've been working with for the past two months and seen great progress, suddenly relapsed due to uncontrollable reasons. Journaling is how I've been coping with feeling discouraged or disheartened. If you care about your OT friend/relative/daughter/son's emotional welling being, give them a journal or anything they've learned to use to cope with overwhelming emotions.

3. AOTA Membership

AOTA stands for American Occupational Therapy Association. As members of AOTA, we receive updates on everything and anything about occupational therapy, from open jobs and upcoming conferences to policy changes and up-to-date research. More importantly, the membership fee allows AOTA to pay for lobbying, which is essential to protect OT as a profession on a national level. Why does OT profession need protection? Well, can you, my dear reader, verbalize the difference between OT and PT or personal trainer or life coach? The OT profession needs public recognition and protection of our jurisdiction.

4. Retractable Key Holder

As OTs, we always have a bunch of different arts & crafts supplies, assessment tools & manuals, and door accesses to guard. We also like to keep our stuff organized. As a result, OTs very often have tons of tiny keys, on top of our own house keys and car key. You'd be amazed by how many keys my occupational fieldwork educator has! A retractable key holder will help us keep all keys together safely! It's also super convenient because we don't have to take the entire key chains off of our belt loop (or wherever we usually attach our keys to) when using the keys. Try gifting the graduating OT student you know a personalized retractable key holder: maybe something with their favorite painting, emoji, or slogan!

5. "Punny" OT Gear

Who doesn't love something “punny"? Do I really need to explain? Plus, OTs tend to have an extraordinary appreciation for humor (here's a "humerus" t-shirt) and witty comments (such as this shirt). FYI, creativity is essential to us, if you haven't realized yet.

6. Portfolio with School logo

Graduation means the beginning of work career! Hooray! To help the newly grads appear at least somewhat professional for interviews, gift them a portfolio with their school logo on it! By portfolio, I mean the binder you use to hold all the resumes together, of course (also known as "padfolio"). Don't create a “portfolio" (e.g. resume, cover letter, etc.) for them, please. That's cheating.

7. Scrubs (or other professional clothing)

This idea comes from personal experience. Yes, I'm the worst at professional clothing. I usually dress super casually: sweatshirt, jeans, and Vans slip-ons. I can maybe get myself to dress semi-business-casual-ly. But, really, I've failed time and time again at dressing professionally! Now, I've retreated to wear scrubs whenever I can choose between scrubs or professional clothing. If the OT student you know want to work in hospital settings, give them scrubs. Otherwise, give them professional clothing, and teach them how to put things together to appear more professional!

8. Arts & Crafts Supplies

OTs very often make use of arts and crafts as part of their interventions, so supply them with arts & crafts to support their career development! Also, arts & crafts can be very effective coping tools to help prevent “burn out", which I mentioned above.

9. Know What OT Is

Although material stuff is very helpful and exciting, let's not forget your support as a friend/parent/relative/etc. for the OT student can be extremely valuable as well! If you do care about what they do and support them in pursuing this career, take the initiative to actually figure out what OT is and be able to advocate for OT will be your first step! And, dear reader, I got you covered: here's the link to my very brief introduction to what OT is.

10. Be at the Graduation Ceremony

Nothing shows support more unequivocally as being present for your friend/daughter/son's graduation ceremony. They've worked their butts off for the past couple years to earn this moment. Be there for them, give them a hug, and tell them how proud you are of them.