Internship

Workplace

Skills: 

1. Collaboration

2. Independency

3. Organization

4. Quick Learner

Most of the tasks that I will do at my internship requires for me to work independently, which I am comfortable with. However, I also understand the importance of teamwork and what it means to work with others. Therefore, if necessary, I am able to adapt according to my surrounding and collaborate with team members. A big part of my internship is creating binders that contain information about the study and forms that participants will fill out during visits. This task requires organization and attention to detail as mistakes can potentially create confusion during visits. Although I already have organizational skills, this task will prompt me to improve on it further. As a biology student, I had to learn how to work with Excel for a lot of my labs. However, the learning process wasn't a struggle and I was able to learn most things on my own. In this internship, I have to work with REDCap, Microsoft TEAMS, and print papers for the binders using a guideline in Excel. Although I have little experience with the first two resources, I believe that my quick learning skill will help tremendously. 

For most of my internship, I did independent work, so I didn't have much chance to interact with anyone other than my supervisor. This meant that I had time to work on necessary tasks like creating binders, transfering charts, and labeling blood kits alone in the office. After finishing those tasks, I would place them to where they need to go, something that I have been working on from last semester. I also had a few meetings with my supervisor to help me understand where I am needed that week and what other tasks I could be working on. Compared to last semester, I had fewer meetings with my supervisor as I became comfortable with what I should be doing and what things are needed at the moment. While I am good at maintaining independent work and being responsible, I do want to continue growing my communication skills through collaboration since it is something I didn't have much chance to practice on. The tasks that I am doing, such as creating binders and transferring charts are things that help patient visits successful and impact the overall study as those data are used to make analysis and conclusions on the research as a whole. 

Successes and Challenges

I felt successful as an intern when I started to feel comfortable doing independent work. After the first few weeks of working, I had to create a binder for a visit for the coordinators. While creating the binder, I felt confident and was able to work on it on my own without asking questions and guidance. It felt nice to get to the point where I was able to be organized and productive. In order to get to that point, I asked a lot of questions when I felt confused or felt as if I didn’t know what I was doing. I made sure to understand completely before I moved on. However, I did learn that asking questions is a step that is required in order to learn, and it is something I have to do as I attempt new things in the future as well. For instance, I want to go to medical school in the future, which will involve rigorous work and effort. To succeed, I would need to learn to be organized and discipline myself while learning to interact with professors and supervisors at the same time. Asking questions is an important part of learning that will help guide me as I go to a higher education.  

The most challenging part this semester for my internship was understanding all the different tools and apps I had to use. Many of them were things that I had never used before, including MicrosoftTeams, REDCap, ATRI, etc. I needed to use them to get specific documents and information about the patients, and learning to use all of them was tough at first. For instance, I was creating a binder and I needed the patient's information to label the documents. To get the needed information, I had to log in to REDCap and ATRI for different sorts of information. Learning how to get to them and searching for the particular participant was difficult at first. After understanding how to use all the tools and apps, I had to know what sources and documents are in what site/app, and that can sometimes be confusing. That seems to take the most time when I am working as well, but it has gotten better as I worked with them more. My supervisor was particularly helpful as she showed me how to use them herself and encouraged me to ask questions. She went through this process of making me learn until I felt comfortable on my own.