Are you considering graduate school or currently navigating your own academic path? The latest episode of "Victors in Grad School" shines a light on what it really takes to thrive—both academically and personally—through the honest, inspiring journey of Olivia Warrington, a second-year physical therapy student at the University of Michigan, Flint.

Hosted by Dr. Christopher Lewis, the episode opens by setting the stage for listeners at any point in their graduate school journey. Whether you're just thinking about applying, already accepted, or deep into your studies, this podcast is designed to offer practical tips and relatable stories from students and experts who have been there before.

Olivia Warrington shares her winding road from an initial pursuit of veterinary medicine to discovering her passion for physical therapy—thanks in part to a serendipitous conversation with a peer. Her experience is a powerful reminder that sometimes, the most impactful decisions can stem from the simplest moments.

A major theme discussed in the episode is the need for self-discovery and adaptability. Olivia Warrington reflects on her transition from undergraduate studies, where she admits to "skating by," to finding success in graduate school through refined study habits and intentional learning. She candidly discusses her process of trial and error, emphasizing that what works for others may not work for you—and that's okay. Her advice? Develop effective study strategies early and continually refine them as you go.

The importance of balance comes up repeatedly. Olivia Warrington talks about the challenge of not letting academic demands eclipse family and personal life, recounting how she learned to say yes to life outside of school without sacrificing her grades. Her journey underscores that holistic success in graduate school means making intentional time for both education and cherished relationships.

Another highlight is Olivia Warrington's emphasis on building a supportive community. She gives credit to her peer group for providing not only academic support but also critical emotional encouragement. Find people who align with your values and study approach, she suggests, as these relationships can carry you through the toughest moments.

To anyone considering graduate school, she offers words of encouragement: have confidence in yourself, explore all opportunities, and don't be afraid to ask questions. Your educational path may have unexpected twists, but with the right mindset and support, success is within reach.

Tune in to this episode for honest insights, motivation, and the assurance that you're not alone on your journey to becoming a victor in grad school. Listen now!

TRANSCRIPT

Dr. Christopher Lewis [00:00:01]: Welcome to Victors in Grad School, where we have conversations with students, alumni, and experts about what it takes to find success in graduate school. Welcome back to Victors in Grad School. I'm your host, Dr. Christopher Lewis, Director of Graduate programs at the University of Michigan, Flint. Really excited to have you back again this week. And as always, every week we are on a journey together. I call it a journey because it truly is. As you are thinking about graduate school, you may be at the very beginning where you're just starting to think about this.

Dr. Christopher Lewis [00:00:31]: You may have already applied, maybe you got accepted, maybe you've started graduate school. No matter where you are on this continuum, you're on a journey. You're on a journey toward meeting the goals that you've set for yourself. And this podcast is here to be able to help you in that journey. I love being able to have an opportunity every week to sit down with you, to talk to you, to provide you some hints, some tips, some things that you can use to be able to find success in your own journey sooner. That's why every week I bring you different people, different people with different experiences that can help you to be able to think about things in different ways and allow for you to learn from what they've learned in their own educational journey. This week we got another great guest. Olivia Warrington is with us today.

Dr. Christopher Lewis [00:01:15]: And Olivia is a second year physical therapy student at the University of Michigan, Flint. And she's had her own educational journey that led her to being here at the University of Michigan, Flint. And I'm excited to be able to talk to her, to learn from her, and to share that with you. Olivia, thanks so much for being here today.

Olivia Warrington [00:01:36]: Yeah, absolutely. Thank you for having me. Super excited to be here.

Dr. Christopher Lewis [00:01:39]: Well, I'm really excited to have you here today and I want to take you back in time because I know that you did your undergraduate work at the University of Detroit Mercy, and. And at some point in that educational journey, whether it was right there at UD Mercy or sometime before that, or sometime in between, you made a decision. You made a decision that you wanted to continue your education. You wanted to become a physical therapist. Bring me back to that point and what was going through your head as you were making that choice for yourself of wanting to continue that education.

Olivia Warrington [00:02:13]: I always knew from a young age that I was going to do more school after high school and I was probably gonna have to do more school after. I was probably gonna do some kind of GR program, my childhood dream. And up until my junior year, I was heavily committed to veterinary medicine. And I started that journey. And I got there and I went through. I was still a biology major at that time, so going into my third year, I took five years to do undergrad. And I. I was like, ah, this just doesn't feel right.

Olivia Warrington [00:02:45]: This doesn't feel right. I was talking to some kid on the soccer team, and he was like, I'm gonna do physical therapy. I'm like, what is that? What does that entail? So I into it. And I was like, you know what? This sounds like something I could do. This sounds like, you know, I'll just. I'll give it a shot. I'll go shadow. And.

Olivia Warrington [00:03:02]: And I loved it. And it's not a super glamorous story by any means. It's just some kid telling me what he was doing. And I. I was like, yeah, I mean, if you're doing it, maybe I'll like it too. And then I stuck with it. And I love it. And I'm so glad that that person told me that he was going to do physical therapy.

Olivia Warrington [00:03:17]: That was about it.

Dr. Christopher Lewis [00:03:18]: So every person goes through a journey after they make that decision to try to figure out, where do I want to go. You got into that fifth year, and you're starting to think about, okay, where am I going to go? What do I need to do? What kind of things do I need to think about? You ultimately decided to attend the University of Michigan Flint. Talk to me about that process for yourself and what ultimately made you decide that the University of Michigan Flint was the right school for you.

Olivia Warrington [00:03:46]: Yeah, overall, I was really looking for something to be close to home. Something I could commute and still live at home, save a bit of money, but if I had to stretch, I would. But. So I applied to all the schools in. In Michigan. I. I heard that physical therapy was really competitive. And so I was just like, you know what? I'm just gonna.

Olivia Warrington [00:04:03]: I'm gonna apply to everything, and hopefully I land somewhere. And fortunately enough, I actually got into quite a few schools, and I applied to nine, and I got into eight out of the nine. And I was. I was like, whoa. I did not expect that to happen. And I. Michigan and Oakland, Wayne State are kind of like the three commutable schools around me. And U of M Flint does a ton of community outreach, and I love that they can make this huge impact on mostly the neurological patients in.

Olivia Warrington [00:04:37]: In Flint with their pro bono clinic and all the exercise classes. I'm sure that Oakland and Wayne State also do those things as well. But I really liked going northbound on 75 instead of southbound. So it seemed like a great fit going and talking to the professors and whatnot.

Dr. Christopher Lewis [00:04:52]: Every student that chooses to go to graduate school has to go through a transition. You have to go through transition relearning how to learn in many different ways. Because you're educated in one way as an undergraduate student, you go to graduate school and there's different expectations from your faculty members. So talk to me about that transition for yourself. As you transitioned in and through your first year into your second year of physical therapy school, you found success. So what did you have to do to be able to set yourself up for success, and what did you have to do to maintain that success throughout your life, your graduate school journey thus far?

Olivia Warrington [00:05:30]: So, a little background on my undergrad. I. I wasn't a super great student. I. I really struggled. I had a really hard time finding what worked for me. And I just kind of like skated by and eventually it all clicked and it came together and it was good, but I never had any, like, true structure to my studying or to the people I surrounded myself with. And I, I just kind of, I just did it and then I ended up here.

Olivia Warrington [00:05:54]: And then in grad school, I had to really figure out. It kind of, it happened. So outcomes and you just have to pick it up and you have to study and you have to do it. So I had to find a great way to study and what personally worked for me because I was looking at other people and I was like, oh, that works for you and you're doing really good. That should work for me too. And that wasn't always the case. So I had to really quickly trial and error, all these different study habits. I found that in my first semester, but I really worked hard in developing those study habits.

Olivia Warrington [00:06:24]: And then it more fell into place second semester. And then by the third semester, I was like, this is it. This is how I'm going to study. This is what works for me. And then I was able to refine it from there, and it just works now. And now I'm doing good.

Dr. Christopher Lewis [00:06:36]: So talk to me about what did you have to do to be able to find that vibe for yourself? We'll say the mojo that you had to figure out for yourself to be able to get yourself on that right path. Were there specific things that you had to do was a trial and error? Was it something else that really helped you get to that point where you figured out, this is the right place for me?

Olivia Warrington [00:06:57]: Yeah, yeah. So what I personally had to do was I. I Didn't know what I could do minimally to maximize my time. So essentially just overstudied. I overstudied for everything and I put a ton of time. I'm, I'm very surprised that I wasn't burnt out after my first semester, but I, after that I was like, something's gotta change before I do hit that burnout. So I picked out the good things and then I held onto those and then I slowly trialed out little things, just keeping the core, that core one good thing, and then added some, some others as I went.

Dr. Christopher Lewis [00:07:34]: I share, I appreciate you sharing that. Now you're in your second year and there are definitely things that you had to do as you went along that helped you to become the professional that you are becoming. And I'm sure that there may have been points along the way where that imposter syndrome snuck in. Talk to me about that and what did you have to do to handle that?

Olivia Warrington [00:07:57]: So with the imposter syndrome, I don't think it's hit me so much yet. I am just starting my first big clinical rotation, so I'm just starting to feel like I'm like, do I even really know things? Which I'm starting to come around to find out that I do. I'm only on day two, so we'll. I'm still trying to prove to myself, but handling it, I'm still trying to figure out what is working best for me. But so far it's just been making sure I feel over prepared for my clinical rotations. Like when the day, night before or even two weeks prior, I was, I was really like freshening up on my skills and I guess throughout the program when I have had those inklings of imposter syndrome, I have, I've just really dug into my work and really made sure that I feel overprepared for specific situations. But in the long run, I'm still, I'm still really trying to figure that part out.

Dr. Christopher Lewis [00:08:48]: So as you've been going through graduate school, there's a lot of times that, where you have to balance things and all of us wear different hats, we have different people vying for our attention, we have different things vying for our attention. And physical therapy as a educational area is a demanding field. It takes a lot of your time and requires a lot of you. So talk to me about balance and how did you find balance within your education in the sense of your schooling, but also balance in work and family and personal responsibilities that you had to maintain throughout graduate school?

Olivia Warrington [00:09:26]: This is a great Point and something that I really had a hard time navigating at the beginning. My first semester, it was just. I thought that I only could do school. I only said yes to school. And then it became very easy for me to just say yes to school and say no to everything else. So I. School just became my default. And I started missing out on things.

Olivia Warrington [00:09:46]: I started missing out on family events and I have little brothers, and so I. I started missing out on some of their big things. And I really hit a point where I was like, I really need to start prioritizing my time a little differently. I was doing really good my first semester and I was like, what can I. What can I cut to make it a little bit more of a work life balance type deal? So I just committed to saying yes to one thing. One thing. A week was my start. And so I started saying yes.

Olivia Warrington [00:10:20]: And I would go, I'd still do work that day or whatever in the morning, but. And then I. I saw the end result at the end of that second semester and I was like, oh, I did about the same. I did the same. So I'm still doing really well. I'm saying yes to family things. And then the next semester, I started saying yes to a couple more things. Just not extending myself over my limit, but still allowing myself to be immersed in my family and be a part of my little brother's life.

Olivia Warrington [00:10:48]: And my friends missed me so much and, and still did about the same. And so just a little bit of fluctuation, but I was still getting more family enrichment type deal.

Dr. Christopher Lewis [00:10:58]: So as you're thinking about the experience that you've had thus far in your experience in graduate school. And I know that the experience going through graduate school, especially within physical therapy, is a collaborative one in regard to the cohort that you are a part of and that you're with as you go through that experience and that it's important to have those systems of support for yourself throughout the graduate school experience. Talk to me about the relationships that you've been able to build with faculty or peers or students and how that has been able to help you in the journey that you've been on thus far.

Olivia Warrington [00:11:39]: Yeah, this one's also really important, in my opinion. At the beginning of grad school, we're all just individuals trying to find our way and trying to find our group. And then you start to slowly see everyone coagulate and you've got these groups. And I just. A couple of girls sought me out and they asked if I wanted to be a part of Their group chat and it just happened to work out so beautifully. The universe really aligned for me that day when I was asked to be. Kind of seemed like they're asking me to be their friend a little bit. And it was, it was very sweet.

Olivia Warrington [00:12:12]: And it just so happened that we had very similar study habits and just very a lot of things in common. How we view school, our excitement for learning and so finding that group that really fits what you, how you view school, how you view studying, how you view your career is very important. And I noticed that each of our little groups in the cohort are so vastly different in how we study and what we have in common and all these things. All very great individuals. But these groups, they fit together so beautifully and everyone succeeds in their own way. But with each other and having my friend group, I give them a ton of credit. I don't think I really would have made it this far without them and without their support. But we lean on each other so heavily and making sure that if it isn't really a great fit, we can always find another friend or at least someone to rely heavily on study wise.

Olivia Warrington [00:13:11]: But I really rely heavily on them.

Dr. Christopher Lewis [00:13:13]: You know, another thing that comes to mind is that as you think back to your education, you think back to the transition into to physical therapy school and you think back to who you were before that. What's something you wish someone had told you before you started graduate school?

Olivia Warrington [00:13:32]: I wish someone told me to have confidence. I know that's a simple one. I feel like a lot of people say that. But the confidence factor in my ability and my ability to study and my ability to potentially treat patients one day and to make a great impact in the community. I wish that was hammered, hammered in sooner. Sooner. It would have saved me some trouble in this last year. But yeah, I think that one's simple and sweet confidence.

Dr. Christopher Lewis [00:14:00]: And finally, as you think back to your own experience thus far and I know it's still going, but you think about other students that are thinking about graduate school, whether it be going to become a physical therapist or something completely different. What advice would you give to that individual that was thinking about graduate school that would help them find success sooner.

Olivia Warrington [00:14:22]: Smaller level study wise. I would find your way of studying in undergrad find that out sooner while you have room for more mistake. It will definitely save a lot of, a lot of hassle your first couple semesters if you have that lockdown sooner rather than later. But also to go and try everything. Go and shadow. Go, go ask as many questions as you can. I wish I. I wish that I.

Olivia Warrington [00:14:49]: I did that more. And I go to every in person interview and for. If you're applying and you get an interview to a school, go and look at the campus, talk to the students, go and do a tour on your own. I did that. And I think that was the best thing I could have done is I went and I just. I did it and I went in person and I experienced this whole beautiful process of applying to grad school. It's so hard, but if you can almost romanticize it a little bit and make it this, like, awesome process, it just makes it so much less stressful and so much more of an accomplishment when you get there.

Dr. Christopher Lewis [00:15:23]: Well, Olivia, I just want to say thank you. Thank you for sharing your journey today. Thank you for sharing what you've learned thus far. I know it's not done. I know you still have time in front of you and probably your answers will be shaped over the next year and change as you are going through these intense clinical experiences. You're being put to the test for seeing how all that knowledge coalesces into the practice that you're doing with the patients that you're working with. But I just want to say thank you. Thank you for sharing all of this, and I truly wish you all the best.

Olivia Warrington [00:15:57]: Thank you so much and I hope this information helps someone on their journey. All right. Thank you for having me. I really appreciate it.

Dr. Christopher Lewis [00:16:03]: The University of Michigan Flint has a full array of master's and doctorate programs if you are interested in continuing your education. Whether you're looking for in person or online learning options, the University of Michigan Flint has programs that will meet your needs. For more information on any of our graduate programs, Visit. Visit umflint.edu/graduateprograms to find out more. Thanks again for spending time with me as you prepare to be a victor in grad school. I look forward to speaking with you again soon as we embark together on your graduate school journey. If you have any questions or want to reach out, email me at [email protected].