Internships: to Stress or to Not stress?

As the fall semester of my sophomore year comes to an end, I can’t help but stress about my plans for the summer. As a pre-health student amidst a pandemic, it has been understandably difficult to gain any experiences within the clinical setting. I attended the panel in hopes to get inspiration (and confidence) to look for internships that might introduce me to other aspects of health beyond clinical work. I hope to try to be productive this summer and to explore policy, media production, and more from a health perspective if I can get the chance. As a pre-health student I would argue that undergraduates are advised to focus more on GPA, test scores, and research and not so much getting professional experience from an internship. My initial fear of applying to internships was the fact that I did not have a solid idea of what experience I was actually looking for. The advice from the members on the panel was very assuring because they each encouraged students to try to apply broadly to internships. Alot of them shared the sentiment that they too were lost about where to start. Their experiences in their respective internships actually helped them realize either that they wanted to continue working in the field or that they indeed did not want to work there. I can agree that it’s equally as important to understand the things you are not interested in as it is to understand the things that you are interested in. In all, the panel really reassured me because I realized everyone starts from ground zero and it’s up to you and explore with trial and error to see what experiences you want to keep having.

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