Goals

Internship Goals

My first goal is to learn what a therapy session looks like. I will accomplish this goal by transcribing therapy sessions, following patients through 6 months of therapy, reading papers about therapy types, and meeting with clinicians to discuss therapy and how they conduct sessions. This could help me begin to think about how I might approach therapy in the future as a therapist or clinician.

I've done a great job with this goal, I have done several transcriptions, which has allowed me to get an inside look into a therapy session, and what the interactions between a therapist and patient look like. Next is to do some more research on therapy and to meet with clinicians to discuss how they do therapy.

My second goal is to learn what day-to-day looks like in a Psychiatry lab. To meet this goal I will observe meetings, complete my daily tasks and assist others when I can, and shadow clinicians and staff. This will help me find out what I like and dislike, and begin to narrow down what I want to do in the future.

This goal is also going well, through working in a psychiatry lab, I've been able to observe meetings and talk with clinicians and other faculty to get an idea of what it's like, I've even been able to shadow a bit and see some patient interactions which has been very valuable. My next step would be to shadow more clinicians of different types.

My third goal is to learn about schizophrenia and other psychotic disorders. To meet this goal I will transcribe therapy sessions with patients that have schizophrenia, read Articles from the lab about projects involving psychotic disorders, and participate in a journal club, where I can read articles about psychotic disorders and hear from staff. This will help me build my knowledge in psychology with on-the-job experience, and give me something to reference in my future career.

I have done a lot towards this goal and learned a lot already. Through some of my data entry activities, I have looked through patient files and read about their experience to learn about what psychotic disorders look like outside of a textbook. My next step will likely be my project, where I will do a lot of research on psychotic disorders and learn a lot more.

Career Goals

My current career and academic goals involve graduate school and research. After undergraduate school, I plan on beginning a master's or Ph.D. program, where I will study either Clinical Psychology or Animal Behavior, which are my two main interests. I want to do research for several reasons, but mostly I love to learn, and I want to learn and discover new things as a researcher.

I am pretty sure of this career option, but Psychology is such a broad field, that I'm totally open to discovering a new passion that might not be exactly what I originally intended. As I take my classes in psychology, and work in different internships and research positions, I hope I will discover what I do and don't like, to narrow down my search.

When I first applied to LHSI, I was mostly interested in criminal psychology. Since then, I have figured out I'm really passionate about anything related to animals. I'd really like to work with animals in my career, either by studying animal behavior or working with animals through animal-assisted therapy. To work in these fields as a researcher, I would need to get a Ph.D., which means I need to be thinking about graduate school. This spring I will focus on the jobs I have now, along with my academics. By focusing on what I am doing now I can improve my performance to establish lasting connections with my supervisors. I will focus on my coursework so I can maintain my grades, and plan out my future semesters to complete everything on time. I applied for a summer internship in animal behavior, which will be a valuable experience if I decide to continue on this path. Over my undergraduate career, my intention is to get involved in as many research and psychology experiences as possible and learn as much as I can. By this time next year, I hope to have had at least two new experiences in research or tutoring, namely related to psychology.

This summer I intend to have another internship in animal behavior, to gain some experience in that area. I will also continue to be a research assistant in the CLASP lab, a research lab at IUPUI that focuses on psychotic disorders. I also want to study abroad, likely during the summer, there are some programs in Europe that focus on psychology research. This internship has really shown me that research is my goal, and has encouraged me to stay on this path, even though I have a lot of schooling ahead of me. I feel really good about my ability to understand my preferences in my career, but I do think I can develop this skill more as I continue to work in new jobs and try new things.

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