My Internship
This year, I have the privilege of working with Dr. Leslie Hulvershorn for the Adolescent Behavioral Health Research Program. As the title indicates, this program focuses on adolescent behavioral health and I will be working in this area.
At this point in time, I plan on doing my best to help my team finish recruiting the necessary participants for the study. Additionally, my site does longitudinal research so it is my responsibility to interact with and keep participants satisfied with our level of communication. I achieve this through sending follow up surveys and compensation in a timely manner and have recently started mailing birthday cards to our participants as well. My site is one of the first that I have seen analyze predictive substance use disorder in children and that is something becoming increasingly important as drugs of abuse become more popular with and available to younger demographics.
https://medicine.iu.edu/faculty-labs/hulvershorn
Learning and Skills
Working in a lab setting will allow me to finetune my research skills that I can apply in future professional roles. Additionally, working with a team will allow me to build on my interpersonal and communication skills, both of which are crucial for any professional.
From this experience, I now hope to learn how a psychiatric research study is run from start to finish efficiently and correctly. I also hope to become even more proficient with software such as REDCap.
This year, I am most excited about getting in depth with participant recruitment and understanding what goes into determining a participants eligibility for a study like the one conducted by my site. I hope to do that by observing the conducting of phone screens and scan visits sometime in the near future.
I am in my opinion using all of the skills identified on the list, but I have particularly become more confident in communication and independence. I can confidently say I can complete most of the tasks given to me by my supervisor without asking for assistance now that I have been sufficiently trained. I also maintain regular communication with both my supervisor and the participants I have reached out to through email.
The skill I would most like to work on is progressing towards my internship goals, the reason for this being that a majority of my work thus far has consisted of typical office work or email outreach. While this is still extremely necessary, I look forward to being more involved in the scientific aspect of the study. I plan on growing this skill by asking my supervisor how I can become more involved in the study aside from participant outreach.
My internship is currently fitting in with what I am learning at school because I am a neuroscience student and am currently learning how the brain is wired for different functions. At my internship we seek to understand how certain wiring of the brain can predict adolescent substance use disorder.
So far as an intern, I am privileged to have learned so much about the inner workings of a psychiatric study from my peers and supervisors. I have really learned how much effort truly goes into participant recruitment and how important that aspect of a study is to its success. I have also learned so much raw psychiatric knowledge from my group's monthly literature reviews and how certain factors predispose adolescents to risky decisions and substance use disorder. I continue to learn every day that I go in to the office and feel very happy with where I currently am as an intern.
My contributions allowed for my supervisors to dedicate more time to conducting the research itself, i.e. MRI scans, because I now handled sending all follow-up surveys and a good amount of data management and revision.
I have used essentially of the mentioned skills at my internship site, but I would like to grow on being able to conduct my own work without strong guidance. I am still very anxious about undertaking my own projects but I will attempt to start one over the summer to grow in this area.
Over the summer, I plan to continue working in the Hulvershorn Lab to develop these skills. Additionally, I am interning with a graduate student in molecular genetics which is a field completely out of my comfort zone. I believe that gaining experience is the only way to become comfortable in a subject and so I hope that this experience will help me grow as a student and as a professional.
The Workplace
After spending a month observing professionals in the workplace, I have seen that my supervisor is very communicative with what he expects from me and how he views my progress. I strive to have this skill as a professional, as well as my coworkers ability to maintain a good work-life balance.
Where I want to grow as a professional, however, lies entirely in the experience that I have. I do not view myself as experienced enough to be a leader or a valuable member of a team quite yet so I hope that as the year continues I can become more experienced and understand my role in an office better.
I am a naturally anxious person so towards the beginning of my internship I kept to myself and quietly got my office duties done. Now, however, I feel that I have built meaningful relationships with my co-workers and even my supervisors to the point where I will definitely be sad to leave this office at the end of the year.
The workplace culture at my internship site is centered largely around independent work with regular check-ins. There are regular hosted social events and seminars to help grow the team as a unit and members individually. I greatly enjoy communicating with my team members and it makes me enjoy going into work when I do.
My ideal workplace culture is one that encourages but does not require team building outside of the workplace. I believe that a team only functions well if everyone is participating willingly and out of a desire to grow. This is similar to the current workplace culture at my site which is why I enjoy working at this site so much and plan to continue for as long as possible.
In my time at my internship, I have been fortunate enough to work with people that are extremely knowledgeable in my field of interest. This grows my desire to learn and makes me want to produce high quality work that satisfies the high expectations my supervisors have for me.
It has surprised me how easy it is to adjust to the day-to-day responsibilities I have in the office. I have quite a lot of social anxiety so I was very overwhelmed by my expectations for this experience but it has been extremely enjoyable.
This experience definitely consists of more routine office tasks than I expected, but I enjoy it because it allows me to establish a solid routine to get all of my work done on time and still be able to focus on my education.
This internship has been an amazing experience to interact and learn with people in the field of Psychiatry that are far more knowledgeable than I am. I have gained extremely valuable knowledge, experience, and connections, and I am extremely grateful for the people I have met during my time here.
Success and Challenges
As an intern, I believe I have had great success with participant outreach. I have kept very up to date with follow up surveys as well as conducting face to face participant recruitment at the children's museum. The biggest challenge I have found with being an intern is not becoming bored of the routine office work that I am responsible for completing in the office. This is not particularly something I can overcome, but I do plan on working from home more often because I can change my environment while completing the more mundane tasks I am responsible for.
As of February 2022, I have switched to working almost completely from home and am no longer challenged by the routine of repetitive office work.
