Dr. Ashley Uyeshiro Simon, OTD, OTR/L, MSCS, is a member of the Trojan Family I am dying to tell you all about! She is the course coordinator and one of the professors who teach USC’s OT 100 THRIVE: Foundations of Well-Being, a course, “designed for students, by students, to promote well-being and mental health among undergraduates.” She also teaches OT 101: Caring for Your Self, a class revolving around teaching you to take care of you!

Before her career as a USC professor, Dr. Uyeshiro dedicated seven years of her life to working at USC’s OT Faculty Practice, where she established herself in many specialties of OT, utilizing Lifestyle Redesign® therapy to treat clients with behavioral health difficulties, chronic pain, chronic headaches, Multiple Sclerosis, and Parkinson’s Disease. I am a student in THRIVE this semester, and I could absolutely rave about it to no end, but I thought I would let Ashley do the talking, so she and I set up an interview to bring a taste of the THRIVE experience to each of you.

While I introduced her briefly above, I myself wanted a more in depth introduction to how Ashley found herself teaching THRIVE, and the path that took her there, and, as we got to talking, she launched into the beautiful chronology of the twists and turns that led her to the career she has today. The beginning of her story opens with her in a position familiar to myself (and likely, some of you): her, at USC as an undergraduate student. She enrolled as an undecided major, before falling into psychology. “I loved learning about the human mind,” she explained. After a meeting with her advisor during which she was informed that she had just about attained the credits necessary to graduate with her degree in psychology, Ashley decided to pick up a minor. She stumbled upon a course in occupational sciences (OS), and she loved it. So, she took another OS class, and she loved that one, too. She declared a minor in occupational sciences, which she felt combined her love for the human mind with the mind-body connection she had always believed existed.

She shared one of her favorite quotes that she feels describes occupational therapy (which she admitted felt a bit sexist and dated, but can easily be modernized with the addition of some more inclusive pronouns), “man through the use of his hands, can influence the state of his health.” We heal, she explained, through activity, through doing. After graduation, Ashley was accepted into USC’s Chan Division of Occupational Sciences and Occupational Therapy. There, she earned her Master’s Degree (MA) as well as her Doctorate (OTD) in Occupational Therapy. Still not tired of USC–who can blame her–she performed her residency at the USC Faculty OT Program, where she was later offered a job.

She joked that each decision she has made in her career could be summed up in the phrase, “I don’t feel confident, but O.K.,” which I argue shows the steadfast, self-esteem and self-confidence that she demonstrates. Dr. Uyeshiro is not afraid to let life guide her; she knows she will put forth the necessary effort to succeed in new and sometimes uncomfortable roles. We can all appreciate her fearlessness. “To be fearless,” Cleo Wade says, “is to be afraid of something but to do it anyway.” Similarly, she attributes her transition from working in the clinical setting to working as a professor to the fact that she “happened to be at the table, and happened to say yes.”

So often, we think that one choice–our major, our summer internship, you name it–will determine the whole trajectory of our lives. Dr. Uyeshiro is a living example of embracing the pivot’s that life throws our way and building a fulfilled, successful career through doing so. During her time as a professor of OT 101 and OT 100, she has connected with her students, fellow faculty and staff, and brilliant minds alike. Most recently, she collaborated with USC Own It, acting as a moderator for the panel Mental Health: It’s Not All in Your Head. I asked her about what she learned from moderating the panel, as well as what she believes to be some of the biggest challenges for women and non-binary students to overcome in order to preserve their mental health in the workplace and on campuses, respectively.

Her answer might not come as a huge surprise, as I am sure many of you are familiar with Imposter Syndrome. She emphasized that, for female and non-binary students in particular, rates of imposter syndrome tend to be higher than their male counterparts, and the intensity with which one experiences it increases if that woman is a member of the BIPOC community, if they are non-binary, and especially if they are non-binary and a member of the BIPOC community. She attributes this to a USC student body that is rapidly diversifying, yet a USC tenured track that is changing very slowly. Simply put, women and non-binary students feel the affects of a power dynamic with them on one end and a primarily white, old, and male administration on the other end. She elaborated that the workplaces we enter aren’t necessarily that different, and that women still experience a friction between authentic expression and fear of experiencing judgement from their bosses and/or peers. Ashley touched on what she learned from the panelists last Saturday, Amy Lee, Dior Vargas, and Priscilla O. Agyeman, MPH, saying, “First of all, they were amazing. Second, I really loved their honesty in discussing burden and balance, or lack thereof.” Each panelist has made talking about mental health their full-time or part-time job, and Dr. Uyeshiro found it beautiful how Priscilla and Dior let their side hustles express who they are, instead of only funneling all of that into their job. She appreciated how they defined balance as a spectrum, affirming that, “balance looks different every day.”

We wrapped up our interview with a few rapid-fire questions.

Q: “Is there any one practice that is a non-negotiable staple that you have for self-care?”
A: “I have a few. First, hydration. (We are talking a 50oz water bottle, people!) I need plenty of water for my brain and body to feel their best. Second, eating: always something, hopefully healthy. Third, a tiny bit of movement–walk the dog, usually twice. And, all of those are really just to take care of my physical body and to keep it working the way it should. Next, as for feeding my soul, my biggest rule is that when I am with my kids, I try to be with my kids. If I have to stay up a little later to get work done, I’ll do it. I give up things to make sure I can be present with them.”

Q: “How did becoming a mother influence your career and understanding of work/life balance?”
A: “I have told this story in THRIVE before, about a moment of realization that I had after the birth of my firstborn. There were these two hour windows between her feedings when I could either eat something, shower, sleep, or do work. I remember feeling so exhausted at that point of my life. I had this moment, when I thought to myself, ‘I don’t feel good.’ After that thought, however, I looked down at my daughter sleeping, and I felt this overwhelming sense of love, and I thought to myself, ‘this must be well-being.” At that moment, I didn’t feel healthy or really physically well, but it was that deep sense of love, that different set of priorities–that realignment of priorities–that, to me, felt like a clear moment of absolute well-being.”

Q: “What do you see as the future of THRIVE at USC?”

A: “What do I see or what do I hope for? Let’s go with what I hope for. What I would love to see is THRIVE being a mandatory part of USC’s core curriculum, as it was hoped would happen at its inception. I know, however, that making THRIVE mandatory will have some effect on the environment of the course. At the very least, I hope for THRIVE to become like Yale’s “Science of Happiness” course. I hope to see THRIVE become this special SC “thing” that everyone wants to be a part of–something that so many students get involved with that we actually see a cultural shift. And then, I hope to see THRIVE expand to faculty, staff, parents, our community members, so that we can continue that shift and introduce more people to what well-being means for them.”

If you’re a student at SC reading this and aren’t already sold, I hope this article might encourage you to open up WebReg and enroll in THRIVE next semester. In a time where mental health struggles are so widespread, it is tools like the ones taught in THRIVE, exemplified by Dr. Ashley Uyeshiro, that keep us well and set us up for success.

We are better off thriving than we are surviving.

XOXO, FI