{"id":12082,"date":"2010-09-10T08:18:03","date_gmt":"2010-09-10T12:18:03","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/today.uconn.edu\/?p=12082"},"modified":"2015-09-23T14:38:01","modified_gmt":"2015-09-23T18:38:01","slug":"iraq-war-veteran-aspires-to-career-as-physical-therapist","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/today.uconn.edu\/2010\/09\/iraq-war-veteran-aspires-to-career-as-physical-therapist\/","title":{"rendered":"Iraq War Veteran Hopes to Help Improve Military Fitness Programs"},"content":{"rendered":"
\"<p>Tunde<\/a>
Tunde Szivak. Photo by Derek Dudek<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

Soldiers are among those who rely most heavily on their strength and stamina to carry out their duties on the job. Tunde Szivak, a former captain in the U.S. Army, knows just how true to life this is. \u201cIn the military, so much of what you do hinges on your physical performance,\u201d she says.<\/p>\n

With hopes of eventually landing what she calls her \u201cideal job\u201d working for the Department of Defense, Szivak wants to help soldiers as well as veterans like herself maintain their physical fitness and recover from injuries.<\/p>\n

Now a graduate student at UConn, Szivak was twice deployed to Iraq. A convoy commander during her first rotation abroad, she was responsible for keeping track of supplies such as water, fuel, and food, in addition to between 30 and 40 fellow soldiers, as they traveled on more than a dozen 18-wheeler trucks across Iraq.<\/p>\n

Her second time in Iraq, she served as commander of a detachment, monitoring from afar the movement of military trucks across the country and tracking the goods they delivered to various military bases.<\/p>\n

In a part of the world where, Szivak says, encountering explosives was \u201ca constant thing on the road,\u201d it was particularly fortunate that everyone on her watch made it back home. One of her fellow soldiers did, however, endure an injury.<\/p>\n

\u201cI saw one of my own soldiers get hurt and what she went through in her recovery,\u201d says the 31-year-old. \u201cIt makes you think about how hard it is for some people who are put in that position.\u201d Working in a profession related to health and physical fitness, she came to realize, \u201cYou could be one of those people who is helping them get better.\u201d<\/p>\n

With an undergraduate degree in philosophy from West Point, Szivak had no definitive plan for her future career. But when a friend in the military told Szivak about a physical therapy program to which he had recently applied, she sensed that the field might be a great fit for her.<\/p>\n

\u201cFor me, it kind of stems from the interest in being healthy, in shape, and helping others do the same thing,\u201d she says.<\/p>\n

After starting classes in UConn\u2019s physical therapy graduate program, Szivak soon switched her field to kinesiology, where she sees herself either doing research on ways to improve the effectiveness of military fitness programs or developing strength and conditioning programs for specialized military units.<\/p>\n

\u201cInjured soldiers have to find creative ways to maintain their fitness, especially those who choose to continue their service in the military,\u201d she says. \u201cHaving an effective strength and conditioning program is even more important for them.\u201d<\/p>\n

She believes her own experience in the Army will come in particularly useful when dealing with members of the military.<\/p>\n

\u201cI think a lot of soldiers get frustrated when they feel people don\u2019t really understand where they are coming from,\u201d she says. \u201cI think it helps having someone who\u2019s been there, who knows what the environment is, who knows where the person is coming from and can relate to it.\u201d<\/p>\n

While the time she spent overseas has transformed how she sees herself and society in general, Szivak says her experiences abroad also helped shape her decision to follow this particular career path.<\/p>\n

\u201cI could choose to go work in corporate America for the rest of my life, making $100,000 a year,\u201d she says. \u201cHow do you justify that to yourself? It\u2019s easier to justify to myself some kind of service. At the end of the day, I can say I tried to do something in my life that contributed in some kind of way.\u201d<\/p>\n

This is the last of four articles this week about veterans on campus.<\/em><\/p>\n

Tuesday: Coming Home to a College Education<\/a><\/p>\n

Wednesday: The Transition to Civilian Life<\/a><\/p>\n

Thursday: History Major Took Advantage of New GI Bill<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Grad student Tunde Szivak says her military service shaped her career decision.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":33,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"_crdt_document":"","wds_primary_category":0,"wds_primary_series":0,"wds_primary_attribution":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[2231],"tags":[],"magazine-issues":[],"coauthors":[49],"class_list":["post-12082","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-health-well-being"],"pp_statuses_selecting_workflow":false,"pp_workflow_action":"current","pp_status_selection":"publish","acf":[],"publishpress_future_action":{"enabled":false,"date":"2026-04-26 08:30:25","action":"change-status","newStatus":"draft","terms":[],"taxonomy":"category","extraData":[]},"publishpress_future_workflow_manual_trigger":{"enabledWorkflows":[]},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/today.uconn.edu\/wp-rest\/wp\/v2\/posts\/12082","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/today.uconn.edu\/wp-rest\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/today.uconn.edu\/wp-rest\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/today.uconn.edu\/wp-rest\/wp\/v2\/users\/33"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/today.uconn.edu\/wp-rest\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=12082"}],"version-history":[{"count":7,"href":"https:\/\/today.uconn.edu\/wp-rest\/wp\/v2\/posts\/12082\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":104702,"href":"https:\/\/today.uconn.edu\/wp-rest\/wp\/v2\/posts\/12082\/revisions\/104702"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/today.uconn.edu\/wp-rest\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=12082"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/today.uconn.edu\/wp-rest\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=12082"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/today.uconn.edu\/wp-rest\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=12082"},{"taxonomy":"magazine-issue","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/today.uconn.edu\/wp-rest\/wp\/v2\/magazine-issues?post=12082"},{"taxonomy":"author","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/today.uconn.edu\/wp-rest\/wp\/v2\/coauthors?post=12082"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}