I am in my first two months of my massage therapy program and am doing well. I have gotten mostly As on all the tests. However, my teacher, although very knowledgeable about the information, seems disorganized with lesson planning. We are constantly starting new body systems/info before completing others and I am getting burned out. We commonly have 2-3 tests a week as well. We are told to review old material but have no time to do it because of the amount of homework assignments and new chapters given. I am working on cutting back my hours to 32 hours/week and only work three days a week to help. We just got a new pathology book yesterday which will require more reading. My program is 750 hours 10 months 4 five hour days/week.
As for the actual massage aspect, so far we are doing faces. I wish we had a way of following the teacher on a projection or tv at the same time as they do it as I am struggling to do it right. I'm thinking about videotaping as the teacher shows the movements (although the teacher does not like being taped) I don't know, I am feeling discouraged. Does anyone have any tips or suggestions for me to help?
Thanks!
Laura Garza
Jeremy - hang in there. I know my last semester in school I had the "blessing" of an unorganized instructor and felt the same way. I learned a lot more that I thought I had. I'm assuming you get to practice on fellow students and at clinics? That's where you will learn the most!
Oct 14, 2017
Laura Garza
I have to disagree with you on some points. I had A LOT of A&P in my massage program at the community college I went through. As a matter of fact, I had to take the same A&P that the nursing, radiology, etc. students took as a prerequisite for entry to the program. Then we went over it again in the massage program as we actually had to be able to find the bones/muscles.
We also had a lot of hands on time massage other students, school clinics (free to public - don't get me started on the schools that charge for it) and were required to work on other health care providers (LMTs included) before we could get our certificate. In addition, we were required to receive massage from LMTs as homework each semester. And we also had the option to work an internship if we wanted (or for the people that were having trouble making clinics). I believe it was 200 hands on hours out of a 608 hour program?
But I have to admit the obsession of 750 hours for schools is excessive if that's not required by the state. Few states need that many hours (NY is 1000). I think most still require 500 hours. And I get really angry regarding the for profit schools charging for student massage, my school didn't. The students aren't getting those $$$, it's going in the schools pockets. Again, I chose to go to a community college program over private massage school because 1. it an allied science program
and 2. it was cost effective.
Gordon J. Wallis said:
Oct 14, 2017
Jeremy Murray
Oct 25, 2017