Anthony Evans

Occupational Therapy Assistant

A visit to Delaware Tech's Owens Campus in Georgetown led Anthony Evans to select occupational therapy assistant (OTA) as his major. However, subconsciously he may have known it was the right path for him for a much longer time.

Evans had worked with an OTA when he was growing up as a way to help him overcome a development delay. While he didn't remember it at the time of his visit, his mother reminded him of it when he asked her for her opinion on choosing a major.

"I took this to heart and did more research on the program and realized that this would be a perfect fit for me," Evans said. "For adults, I would work on activities of daily living like bathing or dressing, similar to my certified nursing assistant (CNA) job. For children who have delays as I did, I would work on fine motor skills to enhance handwriting development, or even look at the person as a whole and make treatment sessions for each client differently. Little did I know there would be so much more but at the time this is how I perceived that I had found my passion."

His visit to the Owens Campus came at a time when Evans knew he wanted to return to college and major in something other than nursing. He had previously attended Delaware Tech, but went through personal struggles and saw his grades suffer.

"At the time, I was feeling signs of depression and anxiety due to personal reasons and all I wanted to do was be social with friends and just go out for a good time all the time," Evans said. "I had to overcome this by finding my true purpose in life. I had known I still wanted to help people and remain within the healthcare field due to knowing I loved the impact I felt with being a CNA."

Evans worked hard for two years to restore his GPA from a 1.31 to over a 3.0, making him eligible to apply for the OTA program. Since he had lost his SEED scholarship eligibility due to low grades, he also found himself balancing schoolwork with paying for college and paying other bills, which was a big challenge.

"I had never worked a job until graduating from high school and did not realize the difficulty of managing school with work and paying bills on top of everything else," Evans said. "I truly needed to find a way to have a perfect balance between school, work, and myself to allow for an overall balanced mental health so I could get to the point I am at now."

After graduation, Evans is interested to begin working as a certified occupational therapy assistant and plans to attend Wilmington University to obtain his bachelor's degree. Eventually, he would like to return to the OTA program as an instructor.

"I would like to say that anyone can improve themselves, but they need the drive to keep them going," Evans said. "Without a drive or purpose to do better, students will float around and never find their passion as I did.

"The saying of never giving up also stands true to the test of time. I have wanted to give up multiple times, whether it was my job or courses or even college as a whole, but with my family and multiple friends around me as my support system I never truly gave in to that temptation."