PDFE #4: Interview

For this PDFE experience, I interviewed George Ryan Hipp on September 27th in the Cage. George Ryan is an Athletic Trainer at Berry College, but he is hired through Advance Rehab, a rehabilitation clinic in Rome.

Question: How long have you been a trainer?
Answer: This is my second year working as an AT at Berry.  Before I was working at Berry, I worked as an AT at different local high schools.

Question: Where did you do your undergraduate studies and what was your major in?
Answer: I attended Berry College for five years as an undergraduate. While I was there, I got my Bachelor of Science degree in Kinesiology.

Question: How did you become interested in Athletic Training?
Answer: While I was at Berry, I started working with Ginger Swann, the head Athletic Trainer. I really enjoyed my experience working with her and so I decided that I wanted to pursue that career.

Question: Did you ever consider any other career besides Athletic Training?
Answer: I always wanted to do something in the health field. When I was first entered college, I was a pre-med major, but my grades were not good enough. I also thought about being a therapist, but then when I started working in the AT office, I found that my true passion and interest was with athletes.

Question: What is your favorite thing about working as an Athletic Trainer?
Answer: I really like the population of people that I work with. Athletes are a highly motivated group of people and they really want to get better. Normally, when you tell an athlete what they need to do to rehabilitate, they are going to work really hard and give you their best effort.  You don't always see that kind of determination in every population.

Question: What is your least favorite thing about working as an Athletic Trainer?
Answer: One of my least favorite things about the job is the inconsistent schedule.  Every week, practice times can get shifted around or athletes will have to re-schedule their rehab times.  Also games can happen on any day of the week at almost any time and its hard to plan ahead.  It's also hard to stay on top of paperwork and other administrative duties because there is almost always someone practicing or an athlete who needs help and you have to cover that before you get your paperwork done.

Question: What is the hardest part about the job?
Answer: The hardest part about the job is that there is just never enough time. You have to try and learn to find the best balance possible for all of the tasks required, but even then, you sometimes just can't get it all done. At that point, you have to prioritize and decide what really needs attention right away and what things you're going to have to let slip for a little while, for better or for worse.  No one ever wants to not be able to give every detail of a job their full attention, but in this job, there just is not enough time for that and you have to be able to let things go.

Question: What are your long term career goals?
Answer: Eventually, I would like to go back to school and earn my PhD.  Then I would like to be able to teach, either in college kinesiology classes or in AT classes.

Question: What are you doing right now to work towards that goal?
Answer: I just recently took the GRE so I can start applying to graduate programs. Right now, I am researching the programs that will best be able to help me reach my career goals as well as fit in with my other life demands and scheduling demands.

Question: What advice do you have for an undergraduate aspiring athletic trainer?
Answer: One of the most important things to learn how to do in college is time management. That is a skill that you will need to use for the rest of your career, no matter what job you take.  Also, students need to make the most of every opporunity and just try to learn as much as possible because a lot of lessons that you can learn and use in a job are taught outside of the classroom.