“Every battle is won before it’s ever fought.” – Sun Tzu, “The Art of War”

If you’re gearing up for PT school and have heard all sorts of stories about how busy you’ll be in the program or how challenging the curricula can be, you might find yourself wondering what it will take to survive the whole ordeal. Thankfully, it’s not complicated, and I’ll walk you through what you’ll need to be aware of to ensure that you not only survive but thrive in your PT program.

To survive PT school, you need to develop the traits of maturity, perseverance, vision, balance, and boldness. Developing these traits will drastically reduce stress, improve academic performance, enhance your professionalism, allow you to stand out among your peers, and dominate the NPTE.

Of course, there are a few critical components to unpack within each of these traits, so if you want the full-meal-deal when it comes to knowing how to develop the rudimentary traits required to crush PT school, keep on reading!

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Maturity: Making sacrifices
Vision: Knowing your “why”
Perseverance: Running the race
Balance: The work-rest dichotomy
Boldness: Challenging the status quo

Related article: How to Succeed in PT School (Don’t Make These Mistakes)

Maturity: Making sacrifices

You’re likely going to have an extremely rough experience if you’re not prepared to make sacrifices while enrolled in PT school. PT school doesn’t have the world’s most challenging curricula to get through, but it does have a plethora of material that will come at you at a relentless pace.

As a student, you will find yourself taking upwards of 15 or more credits of coursework during some semesters. And considering that you’ll have to keep your GPA up above a minimum threshold (most often around 3.2), you’ll very likely have your work cut out for you.

The result of the seemingly constant onslaught of coursework will demand an excessive amount of time and energy. If you’re thinking that you’ll be able to continue on with your social life or other aspects of your personal life without taking a hit, you’re likely mistaken. Some people can pull it off, but all my years in PT school and after that working with PT students have taught me that they seem to be very few and far between.

Sacrifices that you’ll likely have to consider making are in the realms of:

• Social activities
• Job/work hours
• Financials
• Relationships

At times, the need to make certain sacrifices will be incredibly self-evident. At other times, they will be less evident. But regardless, they are always challenging to commit to. As a result, you’ll need to have the maturity to identify and then continually act on the ability to give up what feels good in the present. This is often easier said than done, and it’s one of the main reasons why PT students struggle to the point of decelerating in their program or being removed from it altogether.

Maturity is the ability to commit to unpleasantness and run towards it while ignoring the ever-present call of comfort that beckons you in the opposite direction.

It ultimately comes down to you as to what you’re willing to sacrifice and what you’re not — I can’t help you with that. Just know that sacrifices often yield substantial dividends; give up a bit in the present and reap the rewards in the future.

Vision: Knowing your “why”

“He who has a why to live for can bear almost any how.” ― Friedrich Nietzsche.

When tested in life, the unpleasantness and struggle can become disorienting. It leads to the thought of throwing in the towel and moving on to something that doesn’t demand as much from you or test you in the ways you’re currently experiencing. As a result, the thought of giving up can be one that you soon find yourself entertaining on a regular basis.

…unless you remember why you started.

If you know your “why,” it will act as an anchor when the seas of school attempt to toss you around in the stormy waters of exams, papers, lab material, financial stress, and all the other joys that can come with being a physical therapy student. When you’re anchored by your “why,” you may still get battered by the storm, but you’ll be anchored in place and won’t find yourself at the mercy of the academic waves pushing you wherever they please. As a result, you won’t get disoriented, lost, or scared.

Why are you willing to put yourself through the stresses of school?

If you know this answer, you’ll be able to cling to it as a life source if/when school attempts to break you down. Your “why” will afford you crystal-clear vision for both the ability to see two things:

1. The reasons why you’re willing to do battle
2. The future you’re setting out to create for yourself

If you can pinpoint your “why” and continually cling to it, you will gain the vision required to persevere through any academic storm or event that can come your way. 

Without vision, it’s all too easy to become lost, disheartened, and ultimately another victim to the demands and challenges of being a physical therapy student.

Now, to be clear, knowing your “why” doesn’t necessarily make getting through school any easier, but it does make it possible. Struggles aren’t pretty, but they don’t have to be. You just have to cling to your anchor in the process and believe that you can outlast the storm.

Related article: How to Do Well in PT School: Five Principles PT Students Must Follow

Perseverance: Running the race

It may sound cliche, but it’s very true: PT school is a marathon and not a sprint. That means you’ll need to learn how to produce endurance. More specifically, you’ll have to get good at knowing how to continually keep moving forward whether things are going well or agonizingly bad.

Anyone can keep running a race when things are going well, just like anyone can be a nice person when everything in their life is going perfectly. But it’s in the difficult times that the trait of perseverance is required and then exercised.

Perseverance is the ability to keep moving forward even when you feel like school (or life in general) is repeatedly punching you in the face. You will eventually cross the finish line if you can keep moving forward. The only time the finish line doesn’t come is when you give up on moving towards it.

The trait of perseverance, if volitionally acted on, can help make you bulletproof against the mental or emotional fatigue that continually chases you as a busy student.

So, get good at finding ways to keep yourself moving forwards with both a positive demeanour and a relentless mindset hellbent on victory, even when the struggle is real. If you can do this, you will ultimately cross the finish line. It doesn’t matter if you’re squeaky-clean or battered, bloodied and bruised when you cross it; crossing the finish line is crossing the finish line.

Balance: The work-rest dichotomy

You are a human being, and human beings need challenges. They also need rest. In life, too little of one or too much of the other leads to an imbalance that robs us of fulfillment, purpose, and vitality.

When it comes to school, you’re going to need to work hard — and this hard work will produce and enhance multiple other traits and qualities that will be the envy of others who are unwilling to push themselves the way you do.

Hard work is abundantly rewarding, even when you can’t see it or feel it in the moment, and it can produce substantial intrinsic and extrinsic rewards. And knowing when and how to dose your rest will allow you to keep coming back with a full tank of gas, affording you the ability to resume working harder than your peers.

You cannot be afraid to work hard, and you can’t be fearful of giving yourself some downtime, either. But you must be smart enough to know when to do each.

Let’s be clear: hard work is a very good thing, but you can’t be a slave to it. It can lead to a fearful mindset and put unnecessary amounts of pressure on your shoulders if you are. But if you’re not disciplined enough to work hard in the first place, you’ll never develop a strong mindset.

Working hard is like eating healthy food — it needs to make up the majority of your diet, but there’s room for the occasional dessert or cheat meal. But like anything else, it’s about striking a healthy balance. You need to know when to commit to continuing to eat clean, healthy food and at what frequency (and what amount) you earn your sweets and treats.

What’s the optimal balance? That ultimately comes down to your personal needs and what you want to get out of your academic experience. But the bottom line is that you need to learn how to dial-in this balance. It can take some time and effort to know how to strike the right balance of each one, so don’t pressure yourself to get it perfect right away.

Boldness: Challenging the status quo

As with most of my blog articles, I’ve saved my favorite for last.

What’s the purpose of going through PT school (and life, for that matter) if you can’t challenge the status quo along the way? I say this since you will undoubtedly find yourself dissatisfied with some aspect of the academic experience at some point in school.

You’ll have two options during these times:

1. Put up with it
2. Do something about it

This isn’t to say that you must always spring for the second option. Still, if you’re truly dialled into your pursuits of getting the most out of your personal and professional pursuits, there will undoubtedly be something inside you that at times will let you know that option 1 is simply not viable.

Being bold means that you don’t sit back and passively float through your program. There’s nothing wrong with doing this (just so we’re clear), but I would contend that it leads to a lack of personal and professional fulfillment. Additionally, I’d also contend that it doesn’t train you to embrace a mindset that seeks to improve upon something that YOU can change for the better.

The trait of boldness will afford you the ability to be comfortable with taking the bull by the horns. When you become comfortable doing so, you’ll find yourself naturally much more comfortable with situations arising in school that are less than ideal (think dealing with academic stress, financial stress, challenging course material, etc.).

So, if exercised regularly, the trait of boldness will spill out into multiple aspects of your PT school pursuits (and multiple aspects of your life outside of school as well). Exercising boldness doesn’t mean doing epic or drastic things. It simply means having the courage to identify and act on things that you believe could be made better in some way with your personal abilities, no matter how seemingly small or innocuous those things may be.

Final thoughts

You can get by in PT school without the traits mentioned in this article. Still, there’s a difference between just surviving and actually thriving throughout your program. Without the traits covered in this article, you’re more likely just to scrape on by as a means to simply surviving. But no one wants to do that. Set yourself up for massive success in your PT program and the rest of your clinical practice thereafter by developing the traits covered in this post.

Do this, and you’ll be in the driver’s seat throughout your time as a physical therapy student.