My LHSI Internship

LHSI's mission is "To inspire IUPUI undergraduate student success through high-quality, structured internship experiences that encourage career exploration, skills development, and professional growth."

Lab Members Photo! 

Top left, Dr. Tom Hummer. Top right, Haneen (me) 
Bottom Left, Jocelyn Brickman. Bottom right. Rachel McCarthy. 

My LHSI experience took place with the IU school of Medicine’s Media and Development Lab, led by Dr. Tom Hummer. The lab is focused on the intersection of digital media use and brain development, including understanding the positive and negative influences of media use in children. I am helping out with a study that examines the use of virtual reality to improve social perspective taking in youth (9-12 years old) with disruptive behavior disorders (DBDs) and related brain function and behavior in these youth, providing valuable information regarding the potential for virtual reality to be integrated into therapeutic strategies with this population.

Overview 

Why Did I Chose this Site?

How Will This Internship Benefit Me? 

I chose this site because I am fascinated with the behavior/development aspect of psychology. I am interested in going to graduate school to research development and behavior. I liked the use of technology to the study as well. I wanted to learn more about brain scans and how they are read. Lastly, I felt comfortable and was able to connect with Dr. Hummer and his research assistants from the interview, I felt like it was the right choice for me!  

This internship will play a huge role into my current career goals. It will help me know if it's something I want to keep researching or if I need to re-adjust my goals. In this internship I hope to work on several skills including organization, attention to detail, team work, and research skills overall. I would like to expand the depth of my academic learning and connect it to hands-on experience with this internship. I hope I can gain valuable skills from a team of experienced research professionals. I am also excited to bring in my creative skills as well as my passion into this research. 

Expectations 

I expected to be able to connect with the participants and see them one-on-one but, due to covid and a lot of regulations I didn't do that. 

Reality 

From what I have observed, more than 90% of the research can be done without interacting with people who participate in the it. 

Successes 

I have been successful in relating the knowledge I gain from the classroom to the internship work. I have also been successful in committing to my schedule and being professional in my communication. Another goal I wanted to focus on was to be familiar with how to identify children with disruptive behavior. While I cannot diagnose, I am familiar with a lot of the traits that children with disruptive behavior have. 

Challanges

I feel like most challenges I face come from programs like Excel. I have asked a good amount of questions about it and have struggled the most with it. I am still learning and improving on it! Another challenge I have been struggling with is summarization.

Meaningful Experiences 

What I have learned:


Favorite experiences during my internship: 


Behaviors and actions that I want to have as a professional: 


Behaviors I want to grow in as a professional: 

Most Valuable Thing I Learned 

The most valuable thing I learned at my internship site or being apart of LHSI have been the work experiences. My supervisor Dr. Tom Hummer has allowed me shadow him and other professionals that we work with. This allowed me to see research done from its beginning stages and even observing professionals in their work that contribute to our work.

 A skill I improved on during my time has been professional communication. Many of experiences I had allowed me to practice this it!

Spring Reflection 

 My internship has helped me make sure of the career path I am wanting to pursue. My plan is become a Psychology professor along with doing research on the side.  I would say this internship has helped me experience research and helped me be confident about the path I am wanting to go on. 

The culture at my internship is really good and I feel like it is fitting for my work style and preferred work culture.  My internship was mostly online so a lot of the  questions I had, I would ask online via a site (Slack). It's less intimidating than email which I thought was great. If  I had a longer question to ask then Zoom was used. I was also able to go in person and ask questions if lab members and supervisor were in person. I really liked the flexibility I had when I had a question.  Most of the work I did was by myself which I liked having although sometimes wished it was more cooperative. I still really liked that though. I like being alone to use my creativity and problem solve on my own. I think my site had a good balance of alone work and cooperative work so no complaining here! I liked the ability of leading my own small project and asking questions on the way if I have any along with regular Friday check in with my supervisor to make sure I was doing things right, especially statistical tests (the most painful thing I have ever done lol) .  My workplace culture would have to be very similar to how my internship was. When I reach my career goal (god-willing) I feel like it would be very similar but more interactions with people which is completely fine with me. I did miss in-person interactions with people which if I become a professor I will have a lot of!

I would love to hear your feedback or Questions!!