I am a student at Indiana University Purdue University - Indianapolis and am currently pursuing a Bachelors Of Arts in Psychology. Alongside my degree, I am also in the process of obtaining my pre-art therapy certificate. This supplements my hopes of working with children in the future, being that my main field of interest are Developmental Psychology and Applied Behavior Analysis (ABA). I plan to continue my education subsequent to my Bachelor's degree by looking into graduate schools and conducting research.
I take pride in my people skills and my ability to communicate with others in difficult situations. My positive outlook on all situations allows me to ease my way out of times of stress by keeping a good attitude and thinking of out-of-the-box solutions to problems. I tend to invite any types of constructive criticism, which not only helps me connect with my team members, but it encourages me to never stop improving my work. I believe the most important part of being in a team is being open to all opinions and respect everyone's work.
Because I was working on teams for the majority of my career, these experiences have opened my eyes on how to be a good team member. It is important to realize that the opinions of everyone in the team matters. My position as an assistant manager at a coffee shop required me to make lots of tough decisions, making it important to account for the employees that may be affected by these decisions as well. Communication is a big factor in team building skills. Many of the positions I lacked previous education in required me to ask for constructive criticism in order to be sure of my work. These past experiences have built up my confidence, as well as my communicative skills. I feel much more comfortable communicating with my peers subsequent to having these jobs.
I started as an assistant manager working part time for a coffee shop. This position was very fast pace and required employees to be extremely attentive, encouraging us to think outside the box to eliminate any conflict in an efficient manner. This position required strong leadership skills, which aided to building my skills as a good communicator and problem solver. I believe this position taught me skills that I will take on with me in my future career.
Two years passed as an assistant manager and I eventually decided to expand my career by finding jobs that may be better suited for the skills I want to take on with me in my future career. I began by working towards getting certified as a behavior technician. This allowed me to get started with working with children with autism, as this is one of my main interests. This position allowed me to learn how to work with children with autism and gave me an idea of what I should expect in the future. I worked as a behavior technician for about 6 months. Although I enjoyed the job, I was hit with the pressure of gaining a plethora of research experience prior to graduate school.
I was dedicated to start gaining research experience as soon as possible. I eventually landed on a position of a research assistant at IU Health. This position consisted of implementing research based practices on patients with sickle cell disease. Prior to this position, I was unaware of how research was conducted. This introduced me to research and helped me grow my problem solving skills.
The training of both my position as a behavior technician and a research assistant helped me gain an understanding of any sort of medical terminology that may have been needed in those fields. Overall, my experiences in every position has driven me toward career paths that emphasize the importance of service and leadership. I feel that all of my previous jobs will contribute to my interests of working with children with autism. I have always enjoyed helping people, but these positions have improved the social skills that may be needed to accomplish this. I am lucky enough to already be aware of what I enjoy, being that these positions have confirmed my interests and helped me gain important skills.
I currently work as a pharmacy technician at CVS, which has taught me so much about medications. I now have an understanding of the function of drugs and how to properly produce them for the public. This is something I don't think I would've learned in the near future, being that I am not planning on taking any classes relating to this any time soon. I think this information will really benefit me in the future so I'm glad I learned it very soon in my career.