This last post is about the goals that i had for the summer, and is a direct exert from my self evaluation paper . Enjoy
Through out my internship this summer I had four main goals that I was going to be working for. Below they are listed in the order of most importance to my professional development. I will address each one by its self.
· To get good feed back work at a professional level and implement the constructive feedback that I receive from my peers and supervisor and implement it through out the summer to fulfill Second Nature's internship requirements for moving through their internal training and level system. There is already a system I place that requires me to be evaluated on a weekly bases, then it is expected that the interns will take their feed back and work on in during their next shift and thus having their next weekly evaluation show their improvements
I firmly believe that achieved this goal through my stay at second nature this summer. Before I even started with the program I was very excited about the company due to its high value of peer and employer feedback. Each shift that I worked this summer I got written evaluation from another staff member. After they had completed it, it went straight to one of the field directors for review. They then added their comments to it and I got it back in my mail box. IN addition to this written feedback. I strived for and received timely verbal feedback in the field on a bi weekly and daily bases. Through out the summer I was able to take the feed back that I had gotten and apply it to the job and develop professionally. There are still some things that I need to work on, however for the most part I was able to take the feedback I was given and use it.
· Maximize my field time, thus enabling me to advance my education through hands on learning. There are several areas that I would like to improve on through out the summer; Primitive skills, being a more active supervisor, as well as advancing my group process skills.
This summer I spent the most amount of time that I was able to in the field. I worked an Eight day shift with a six day off shift after wards. I was n the field for sixteen days a month for three and a half months. This is the most amount of hands on field time that I have gotten to this point in my career. I was able to develop several of the skills that I wanted to work on.
First off my group processing skills improved greatly. As a Level one staff member a large part of my day-to-day tasks involve working with groups in their therapy. I had to be able to read the group and respond in a good manner to their needs. This is something that only comes with practice and over time. Over the summer I was able to expand on my number of field days, this was something that incredibly valuable to me as an out door educator.
· Learn the inner workings of a program like second nature, the field side of your program is backed up by the office and support staff, learning more about how that process works is something that I would find very beneficial to me, as it is completely foreign to any thing I have done before. I will do this through spending some of my time at my internship working in the office as compared to working in the field.
About two thirds of the way through the summer I was informed by my supervisor that I was going to be spending the following shift working in the office helping out and doing what ever tasks that might look like. This was a required par of the internship through Second Nature and something that I was looking forward to. I did a little bit of every thing that week and actually ended up going back out to the field due to a staff shortage, but the first half of the week was a whirl wind. I have to say that I learned a lot. Over those several days I cleaned and repaired gear, ordered parts for stoves, made copies and unloaded. I helped the nurse with med visits to the field and drive the back up truck doing field food drops and picking up supplies, I changed tires and washed trucks. Most importantly I learned that no one, not even the field director can escape all of the hard dirty work. I also learned how easy it is to take your support staff for granted. Seldom seen and almost never mentioned the LC people are the BACKBONE of a program like this. Working with them for the week was a very good experience for me. While it made me miss the field and say to my self “ thank god I work in the woods because that copy machine hates me” It also helped me understand how hard their job is on a day-to-day bases. I would say that I have fulfilled this goal of my internship.
· To fulfill my internship requirements for Unity College through out the summer. I plan on doing this via Blog on a weekly bases as well as presenting this program to students in my major through my internship presentation.
To date I have fulfilled all of the internship requirements for the college as well as Second Nature. The hardest part of this was getting in my blog posts. You see when I had decided to do the blogs vs a journal I had totally forgotten that I would only be doing them twice a month since I was only working two weeks out of the month. In addition to that the amount of things that I could actually write about was severely limited due to the clynical nature of my work and how it is protected under the HIPPA act. I was able to get all my blog post in with the last one being part of this paper about my goals.
One of the high lights on this goal was being able to go up and meet with the outward bound semester that was currently happening and give my internship presentation to them. I went along with Jonathan Crowley and we chatted to them about possible internship opportunities through our programs. In addition to this we wanted to show them how our education here at unity college had transferred out the our “ real world “ jobs.
Through out my internship I have to say that there was only one goal that came up that I was not expecting and that was promotion. I went into this job with the understanding that I was going be a summer intern, and I did not know that there was going to be an chance for me to get promoted through out the summer. You see, all staff start out as interns at second nature, after a month and a half they have the chance to bump up to a level one staff and from there, they can go all the way to a level five staff or mentor. About mid way through the summer I took, and passed my test to get promoted to a level 1 staff, this I have to admit caught me by surprise. I did not know that I was going to get this chance when I started out and as soon as I found out that I could I made strives to keep climbing the ladder. By the end of the summer I had enough field time and the right trainings to bump up to a level two staff, However I did not see the point in it on the account that I was leaving to come back to school shortly after that. However by getting things done at work and by setting this new goal to get promoted I was able to set my self up for returning to second nature.
I know its not super exciting but it sums up my experience nicely
I had a blast at second nature and will hopefully get to return this summer
cheers for the final time
TD
