Goals & Learning

Career wise, I am a Health Science Pre-PA major. With this internship, I hope to develop essential skills to help me in my future career and later in life. 

My current career plan is to enroll in PA graduate school. I am interested in wanting to become a PA and go into plastic surgery specifically because my want to make people feel better. With many reasons on why people acheive plastic surgery of all kinds, I want to help complete these individual's goals and make them feel more confident. I am very sure of this career path of mine. This year I hold leadership positions in extracurricular clubs at IUI, a LHSI student, and an Honors student. With all of these things, I hope to obtain strengths and valuable skills along the way to help me achieve this career. This internship has promoted my knowledge of research and the importance around research. It has confirmed and gave confidence in my career path and given me many skills I can carry on to my future career. 

With my prior goals, I was focusing on gaining transferable skills for careers, but with this internship, I have seen I have developed many new skills I was unaware of. After this internship, I plan to gain more patient care hours and enroll in summer courses that will strengthen my academic foundation and better prepare me for the PA school application process. During the remainder of my time at IUI, I’m committed to maintaining a strong GPA and academic standing to improve my performance on standardized exams and stand out in the competitive graduate school admissions process. This internship has helped me become more intentional and confident in taking the next steps toward my professional goals.

Since joining LHSI, I’ve realized how much I value being part of a healthcare team and contributing in meaningful ways, even behind the scenes. My goals have shifted from just gaining experience to actively preparing for PA school with a clearer sense of purpose. This summer, I plan to shadow healthcare professionals and volunteer in clinical settings to deepen my understanding of patient care. For the rest of my time in college, I’ll focus on building strong relationships with mentors, staying engaged in healthcare-related activities, and continuing to grow both academically and professionally.

Learning Goal #1: Develop vital soft skills.

Relevance: Developing vital soft skills now within this internship allows me to succeed better in my future career. Developing these skills also allow me to get a another point of view on healthcare and learn more about it.

Action Plan: In person teamwork, completing data assignments, and becoming a community contributor by the study support group.

Progress: With my time as an intern, I was able to work independently and along my coworkers to develop transferable skills. By completing in person tasks,  I gained communication and teamwork skills in a research environment. I can not only use this for my future career but also in the job I have now!

Learning Goal #2: Connect with a wide network.

Relevance: Being able to connect with a wide network allows me to build my resume and promotes further opportunities in my career.

Action Plan: Communication via in-person and virtual, connecting with providers outside of my assigned doctor, and the poster presentation.

Progress: I have been able to work with many people outside of my direct boss and Doctor. I was even given the opportunity to shadow a clinical core provider, Dr. Mathews, to gain a provider perspective of a patient appointment. The poster presentation/infographic has allowed me to gain connections with the clinical core supervisor as well.

Learning Goal #3: Gain knowledge within ALLFTD (Longitudinal Frontotemporal Lobar Degeneration).

Relevance: Being ble to learn about the study can help me in my future career by learning about an uncommon disorder that I am interested in.

Action Plan: Expanding knowledge learned from Dr. Clark to family issues, learn how to best go about the disorder, and the poster presentation.

Progress: With FTD being 10-20% of all diagnosed dementia and not having a known cause or treatment, I now have a better understanding of what the study contains and how the research is conducted. As said in the skill above, I was able to shadow a provider on a patient appointment and doing this allowed me to gain first-on experience with the study and what tests are ran.

• One skill that I am most confident in is teamwork. With this internship site, I have been working alongside and creating patient packets and binders for information and paperwork on the study. This includes general information, their study, and the patient's results. 

• One skill I was more confident in was my application of knowledge. Going into this internship, I was uninformed of this study and how common and unknown this dementia was, but now leaving I feel I grasped a very good understanding and can conduct data and research on individuals myself! One way I will grow more skills after LHSI will be at my patient-care job.

• I think the skill I need the most work on is integration and application, only due to have gradually being introduced to things. This is a possible positive thing as well, giving me the chance to master a task and then learning a new task. One thing that would help develop this skill is to just keep doing tasks of all kinds and mastering them.

• One skill I want to continue to work on would be confronting challenges and failures. I would like to improve this and continue to build on this skill because there would be times at my internship site where I took longer to solve a challenge than I should have. Though this did not harm anything, confronting the challenge and overcoming it in the fastest way possible would be best.

• At my site, I feel very welcomed and appreciated when I am doing work. I feel very included in the assignments I do and my supervisor has also been concerned and asking about my school work as well. This shows that she is very caring outside of the work environment. With this, I feel my major was a very good stepping stone for my future career and has making me feel more positive about my choice. This internship shed light on the importance of research and why having clinical core volunteers are so important. Pertaining to coursework, I have been able to use this study in one of my classes and inform my peers about this type of dementia.