Senior Karli Zetah first underwent physical therapy in middle school after injuring her shoulder. It took a few years before she truly realized how much the therapy helped her recover — and would guide her to her future career. While on crutches after injuring her knee sliding onto a base in softball — she has been especially grateful for her physical therapists.
“I love being active,” she said. “You don’t notice it until you don’t have the ability. I want to be someone who helps people get back to what they love doing. I want to help people figure out a way to recover. I love studying the mind-muscle connection.”
Zetah chose to major in Biology with a pre-physical therapy track.
Following graduation, she will attend graduate school for physical therapy and hopes to use her career as a way to travel, working at various clinics on short- (or long-) term contracts.
“I questioned the pre-physical therapy track at first,” she said. “I thought, ‘What if I change my mind?’ But it was explained to me that it’s a general biology degree, but they make sure you have all the classes you need to get into a physical therapy program. If I ever doubted myself, it would have been easy to switch to any other biology degree: pre-med, pre-PA, biochemistry, anything along those lines. And even after I graduate, I can use my biology degree to get a different degree.”
Zetah researched different schools that all offered her sport and her area of study. What drew her to Saint Mary’s was the close-knit community.
“I could see how everyone knows everyone and the relationships the students have with professors and each other,” she said. “That it’s pretty here was an additional bonus.”
She saw that Saint Mary’s was a place where she could grow, and her work as a resident assistant, as chair of the admission ambassadors, as vice president of student affairs on student senate, and as a member of the softball team, attest to that.
When she talks to potential students, she said her selling point is community — the thing that sold her. “Here, you don’t just have one friend group, because there are so many ways to meet people and build connections,” she said. “I tell a story about how, two years after I had a professor, he ran into me and mentioned a play that happened in the playoffs, four months previously. Everyone here cares about you.”
