For my project I made a booklet of the taping my mentor has shown me how to do such as; fingers, thumbs, wrists, ankles and shins. I wish I would have practiced my taping skills more throughout internship because I can't remember every step of each tape job just yet. Although learning the steps for each is hard I had fun doing it because I feel like not many people have the skill to tape body parts properly. Once I am in college doing athletic training I will have a head start on a lot of people!
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Get a head start! Start looking into internships you would like to do now! Many of my fellow classmates did not enjoy their internship experience because they didn't put much thought into where they wanted to be for the month of January.
I love my internship at Horizon, I contacted my mentor in the summer before junior year and gave her kind of a heads up that I will be contacting her again closer to December with all the details about internship. I believe that this is what got me my internship, otherwise I feel like it would have been too short notice if I didn't contact her during the summer. Put a lot of thought into what you want to do because you will be spending a whole month doing this! Now that I know that I want to do athletic training for a living in the future I can look for colleges that have that specific major. There are many colleges that do not have athletic training, so I also have to look for universities that have Kinesiology. One of my top choices is Point Loma Nazarene, not only because they have an amazing athletic training program but they are local! Internship has definitely set the course for my life.
I am most thankful for my mentor, Christi Evans. Not only is she an amazing athletic trainer, she is one of the sweetest, most intelligent people I have met. Although she is only 29 years old, she has a lot to say about life and teach from her mistakes. This last month, Christi and I have become close. She tells me about her life and what she has gone through. She is a very positive person. Since we have spent so much time together she has told me very personal things and they have made me think about my own life. During one of my basketball games last week I was in a situation where I would normally get angry and act out but this time I thought about how unproductive and no effect me yelling was gonna do. I thought about my actions and how Christi has handled situations and I stayed calm and gave my teammate constructive criticism instead of yelling. I believe that the most important part of internship is finding a great mentor who is going to teach you about their job and life.
I have developed communication skills throughout my internship. I have learned that communication is key when working with others. It is better to know exactly what you are doing than not knowing at all because you are uncomfortable with asking for help or clarification.
Doing this internship with an athletic trainer has influenced my focus of my goals for my future. I now know that athletic training is what I want to major in when I am in college. I have already started looking at universities with this specific major. I will be showing a prezi full of photos I have accumulated throughout these last three weeks.
I will have bullet point notes on my phone in case I need to look at it while showing my photo presentation. I will bring my project and show it around the room. Daily Work
Internship has really shown me what daily life as an athletic trainer is like. Since this is the type of job I have wanted for a while now, experiencing it was amazing. I know that I really want to do this in the future. Internship has helped me focus my goals for the future; such as what I want to study in college and what level of athletic training I would like to do. Communication in the work place is key because knowing exactly what you need to be doing gets the job done rather than kinda knowing what you're doing without asking for clarification. My mentor and I have to communicate a lot because her hours are different every day. Since there are days when there is soccer games, basketball games, and practice, some days she has to work 30 minutes and some days she has to work up to 9 hours! Almost every day I ask her what her hours are for the next day and if anything ever changes she texts me letting me know what time she needs me to be there.
Also, during work she tells me exactly what she doing while being with an athlete. She tells me what could possibly be wrong, how the athlete should treat the injury, what steps are in the tape process, and anything else that is going on. I have learned that communication is very important, people feel uncomfortable or shy about asking a lot but honestly people do not care about questions! They rather help you understand completely than not at all! Half Way Done!These last two and a half weeks have gone by so quickly! I am in love with my internship and I am sad that it's going to end soon.
So far I have gathered all my materials for my project. My project is to create a book with all the taping I have done so far and how I've improved on that specific taping. I will continue to add more and more as I finish up my internship. Throughout my internship experience I have gotten a better idea of what an athletic trainer does on a daily basis and I know that this is what I want to do in the future! Now I can look at specific universities that have my major. I have met a couple of other type of "physical trainers" while I have been at Horizon and they all love their job so when I have conversations with them I get a lot of good and useful information. Internship vs SchoolThere are a lot of similarities between my internship and school. Since I work at a high school most of my interactions are with people my age, but it is kind of different. It is different because I am only working with sports and athletes, not school work. I have not used a pencil in weeks. Another big difference is that I do not start until 2 PM which is AMAZING! I think that my internship benefits me because Athletic Training is what I want to do as a job. Knowing what every day life is as an athletic trainer makes me see how my life would be like in the future if I decided to go in this direction. My internship has taught me a lot about athletic training, but it has also taught me about being a better person. I feel like my mentor has opened up my mind and taught me how to handle situations differently than I would normally. All of our conversations have an impact on me. I believe that I am getting really close to my mentor in the short time we have been together and I think that these next two weeks are going to be great! This is one of the basketball boys that I have become friends with. |
GoalThe junior students at High Tech High were on internships during the month of January going into the month of February. These are my daily blog posts throughout my experience. |