My Internship
Learning and Skills
Through this internship I have been able to grow and develop my professionalism, communication skills, and gain insight into and experience the research process. My internship was very communication oriented, with the majority of communication occurring digitally, so communication, attention to detail, and professionalism in the context of communication are skills I have been actively using and developing in my work. This meant that many of the skills I grew were in programs such as Teams, Excel, and Email.
In some of my auxiliary roles such as creating scoring templates and organizing records, I was also able to build my skills in independence, organization, and time management. Overall, the variety of tasks I undertook during my internship has made me a more well rounded professional, researcher, and academic.
Within my primary role, longitudinal follow up, there were many subtasks that helped me develop specific competencies. In the initial steps building and maintaining detailed records of participant surveys, including when they were initially contacted, when surveys were sent, and their compensation status, helped me to learn many Excel functions and shortcuts.
Throughout this process I also built many tools in Excel to help facilitate the process including a function that tracked rates of response to survey requests and completion of surveys and an age calculator to ensure subjects received the appropriate surveys. This also was an experience of the value of organization and its purpose within the process as it allowed me to quickly and reliably report statistics about completion and move through the process of contacting participants.
Another task I completed in Excel was building a scoring template for the Kiddie Schedule for Affective Disorders and Schizophrenia (K-SADS), which is an structured interview template designed to diagnose children 6-18 years old with a variety of mental disorders. Through this process I was able to learn more about the data analysis part of research. The template I built was designed to clean the data, in other words transform the input data into a simplified format that statistical analysis could be run on. I also gained knowledge about Excel programming and learned many commands and shortcuts that allowed me to accurately score that data and complete the template efficiently. The template is still used by the lab to score incoming K-SADS data for later analysis.
During the semester I began my internship, I also added a certificate in data science to my degree pathway, with the goal of learning more about the data collection and analysis side of research. Through my work in Excel managing data collection and data cleaning I was able to grow my undertsanding of the data lifecycle through the real world role I had in the process. Additionally, I have been able to apply the skills I learned in my lab towards my classes where I have cleaned datasets and utilized my understand of the data lifecycle to see the big-picture of my projects and their possible future uses. The observation of both my own work as well as the work of my senior coworkers has shown me the data lifecycle in a real world setting and educated me on the individual steps and their function in the research process.
The observation of both my own work as well as the work of my senior coworkers has shown me the data lifecycle in a real world
The other part of longitudinal follow up was contacting participants, during my time at the lab this was done entirely virtually. Email was used to contact participants to obtain permission to send surveys, disseminate the surveys, and trouble shoot any issues participants had with the surveys. Additionally, I attended weekly lab meeting on Zoom and even presented a paper review via zoom. In the modern space of research, academics, and many other fields, socially distanced work has become a norm, so by learning how to professionally and productively communicate via platforms such as Email and Zoom, I will have an easier time integrating into any future professional or academic settings I enter.
Communicating with participants over Email and particuarly trouble shooting survey issues, has made me much more confident in my ability to communicate in writing and especially electronically. I am able to write professional and information dense communications much quicker and with fewer mistakes than when I started this internship. Outlook has become a much more familiar platform to me, as has email ettiquete which allows me to present myself much more professionally via email. I have actively applied this strength across multiple contexts including emailing professors about projects and classwork, reaching out to and meeting with team members on group projects, and inquiring about professional opportunities.
During my time at the Hulvershorn lab I was also able to grow skills directly related to the field I am interested in: Research. Outside of the data collection and analysis process, I also engaged in background research into the Hulvershorn lab's area of interest. The result of this was a journal article review I presented to the PI and other staff. Researhing and presenting the review taught me a lot about the field standards for paper reviews and allowed me to grow as a public speaker and presenter.
My experiences with this project and my overall exposure to the process of research has changed my view of research and driven me to pursue a career in research. This internship has driven that desire by showing me the process of turning responses on surveys and results of psycholigcal tests into actionable understandings that can impact countless people and provide a net benefit to society.
This increased self-reliance in turn led to an increase in my ability to work unaided and my confidence in my ability to work in an actual research setting
This internship was one of the first times I was allowed and expected to work independently and with minimal oversight. During this internship I had the opportunity to focus on improving my self-reliance. As I progressed through my responsibilities I relied less on my supervisors and only brought questions to them when appropriate and necessary. This increased self-reliance in turn led to an increase in my ability to work unaided and my confidence in my ability to work in a real world research setting.
Overall this experience has helped me to grow in so many ways. As a professional, academic, and scientist I have gained valuable skills and knowledge that has improved my understanding of research as a process and how to practically move through the process. As an explorer, problem solver, and person I have discovered a new passion of mine that I am pursuing as my lifelong career. This experience has been very special for me because it has been quintiessential for my growth, I have been able to test my abilities and problem solve based on the results to develop myself in a variety of roles. Being able to watch my K-SADS scoring template in use or have my coworkers congratulate me on a good paper review has made me more cofident in myself and proud of my work. This internship has allowed me to grow real world skills and knoweldge, but what I feel is most important about my time at the Hulvershorn lab is what I have learned about myself through the experiences and knowledge I have gained while engaging in this experience.