Tag Archives: Psychology

Varuna Jasodanand ’20: Perelman School of Medicine

Posted on by

Name: Varuna Jasodanand
Class Year: 2020
Major: Psychology, Philosophy
Hometown: Curepipe, Mauritiues

Internship Organization: Perelman School of Medicine
Job Title: Research Fellow
Location: University of Pennsylvania

varuna

What’s happening at your internship?

We are conducting studies on patients and healthy controls, investigating the neural mechanisms underlying affective illnesses. We are researching the potential benefits of administering transcranial magnetic stimulation to targeted brain regions in alleviating negative symptoms.

Why did you apply for this internship?

I want to pursue a career in clinical neuroscience, and working at the center for neuromodulation of depression and stress provides me with a perfect idea of what working in this field actually is like.

What has been your favorite part of this internship?

Bonding with everyone at the lab because they have all been so kind and helpful!

Can you talk about the skills you are learning and why they are important to you?

I am learning a lot about programming and data organization and management. These are very important for the field of clinical neuroscience because of how prevalent the use of neuroimaging methods are.

Hikma Salhe ’20: Together For West Philadelphia

Posted on by

Name: Hikma Salhe
Class Year: 2020
Major: Psychology
Hometown: Philadelphia

Internship Organization: Together For West Philadelphia
Job Title: Summer student researcher
Research Site: Lankenau Hospital
Community Immersion Site: Lewis Cassidy Elementary Plus School

What’s happening at your internship?

I have spent this summer working as a summer student researcher at Together for West Philadelphia, a nonprofit organization. Their main goal is to provide a holistic approach in servicing the public health issues that affect the west Philadelphia area by partnering with Main Line Health. This initiative is incredibly important as it works toward resolving the disconnection between the communities that live on either side of City Ave., both in their social and health realms.

Why did you apply for this internship?

As a rising senior, I knew that I wanted to spend my summer working with an organization in a field of my interest. TOCFWH and TFWP are not only in the public health field but they also serve a community and demographic that sits close to my heart. As a West Philadelphia native, I’m aware of the many issues and troubles that strike the area. However, through this experience I was exposed to an ever deeper look at the issues (e.g. statistics, person-to-person interactions, etc.).

What has been the biggest challenge you have faced at your internship?

A huge part of my internship was centered around the reports we wrote and submitted every week about our specific zip codes. Each week there was a different category of assessment (e.g. qualitative assessment, zip code history, etc.) that we had to research. I very quickly found that it is incredibly easy to find heartbreaking statistics and facts that fit the narrative that has been built around marginalized communities. However, I knew that the aim of this project wasn’t to weave a similar story, but instead it was to create a community narrative that would uplift the community while still addressing pressing issues. Even though it was difficult to reframe how I approached the statistics, it was an incredible learning experience for me academically and mentally.

Was this internship what you expected it to be?

This internship was everything and more! I was a little hesitant going into it; I just didn’t know what to expect. However, it was the most rewarding experience I have ever gotten the privilege to be apart of.

Jing Lin ’21: Summerbridge Hong Kong

Posted on by

Name: Jing Lin
Class Year: 2021
Major: Psychology
Hometown: Beijing

Internship Organization: Summerbridge Hong Kong
Job Title: Student Teacher
Location: Hong Kong

What’s happening at your internship?

I am working at Summerbridge Hong Kong this summer. The main job for me is to teach secondary school students English. Students may come from underprivileged families, and they are eager to learn more about English.

My typical day starts around 8 a.m, when I, along with the other student teachers, get to the school at which we are teaching. Around 8:30, we great the students from the bus pick-up location. The students are coming from different local schools. They have advanced through the competitive selection process to be part of the Summerbridge.

Then all the teachers and students gather in the Hall to start our day with the All Site Meeting (ASM). During ASM, students and teachers perform a short skit in which we introduce the Word of The Day. Then students go back to their classroom with their first-period teachers. A typical classroom has 8-10 students and one teacher. We have 100 students and 20 teachers this summer at the school I am teaching. Every teacher is responsible for teaching two period in the morning, and there are four period in total in the morning. I am teaching Psychology in Daily Life, which I introduce the concept of experiments, the different stages of sleeping, and some part of cultural psychology. In the afternoon, we have different electives for students to choose. I am teaching Arts and Crafts with another teacher. During the craft class, we built art projects together.

Why did you apply for this internship?

I love teaching and I love children! Also, I am attracted to the model of SB, which is Students-Teaching-Students. All the student teachers are coming from different parts of the world. They are either in college or in high school. As student teachers, we are encouraged to develop our own special courses which we are passionate about.

What has been your favorite part of this internship?

During lunch time, I have the opportunity to get to know my students better. During lunch, all the students and teachers gather at the Hall room. I usually go talk to different students every day. During lunch time, my students are also more relaxed, and they are more willing to talk to me about themselves

Can you give us three adjectives and three nouns that describe your internship experience?

Three adjectives: rewarding, hardworking, enthusiastic
Three nouns: fun, teaching, interaction

I think this internship requires me to put lots of effort in, including developing lesson plans based on my students’ need and interests. It is also rewarding because I enjoy seeing my students having fun in my class. It’s fun to teach at SB surrounded with enthusiastic peers and students.

Jessie Zong ’20: The Quad Manhattan

Posted on by

Name: Jessie Zong
Class Year: 2020
Major: Psychology
Hometown: Arcadia, Calif.

Internship Organization: The Quad Manhattan
Job Title: Psychosocial Intern
Location: Manhattan, N.Y.

What’s happening at your internship?

I am interning at The Quad Manhattan, which is a summer program for twice exceptional children. Twice exceptional means that these children have both exceptionally gifts, but may also have a disability. I am working in a classroom consisted of 5- and 6-year-old children. Many of them have learning, behavioral, or emotional disabilities and the main goal of this summer camp is to tackle some of their lagging skills. Each intern is in charge of tracking the goals of three children. Thus, I have been coming up with different goals I would like each child to tackle over the summer. Throughout the day, we use proactive problem-solving strategies to build on their lagging skills and goals. Additionally, I will be presenting on the children’s progress during their mid-summer parent conferences in the upcoming weeks.

Why did you apply for this internship?

I applied for this internship because I thought this was a great blend my interests: Education and psychology. As someone who is planning on working with children as a profession, this seemed like a great opportunity to not only gain experience working with children but also gain clinical experiences. I also wanted to step out of my comfort zone as I have never worked in a classroom specialized for twice exceptional children.

What has been your favorite part of this internship?

My favorite part of this internship has definitely been seeing the progress that my campers have been making. Every day, each child is working hard to tackle their lagging skills and I can definitely see the progress they are making; seeing how proud they are of themselves for working hard, makes this job so rewarding. Additionally, it has been wonderful to make connections and relationships with each child in the classroom. It has also been great to connect with other interns and learn about their interests and post-graduation plans, as it gives me more information in regard to what options and opportunities I may have in the future.

Living in a new city? What has that experience been like for you?

Living alone in New York City is definitely something I never thought I’d do. I was a little nervous coming into this experience as I will be living in this big city alone. However, it has exceeded my expectations; it has been an amazing experience and joy to explore this crazy new city and meet new people at my internship. This experience has definitely made me more independent and excited for the future as this may be a city where I would like to be after graduation.

Sophie Goldstein ’20: The Quad Manhattan

Posted on by

Name: Sophie Goldstein
Class Year: 2020
Major: Psychology
Hometown: New York City

Internship Organization: The Quad Manhattan
Job Title: Psychosocial Intern
Location: New York City

What’s happening at your internship?

At my internship, we have just welcomed the kids to camp and introduced our expectations for the summer. I have been paired with three 5-year-old children to create individualized psychosocial plans for them and have begun tracking their progress so far. I am constantly reminding the kids of their individual goals and helping them to get closer to being able to do them on their own. Fortunately, I have been able to use my varied experience in psychology classes and labs to know the appropriate ways to communicate with young children and the most effective ways to convey the information in a concise and informative way for 5 year olds. Besides the goal-setting, with my co-counselors, we are busy taking the kids to different activities and on various field trips. We’re all super excited to go to the transit museum next week!

Why did you apply for this internship?

I applied for this internship because I knew I wanted to continue working with young children but in a more psychosocial and educational setting. As someone who is interested in education and psychology, and specifically early childhood development, this internship provides me with some answers on different professional roles in this field and the various ways one can involve themselves. As much as I am learning from the kids, I have been lucky to learn a lot from the psychosocial staff who have imparted career advice and general life advice generously.

What has been your favorite part of this internship?

So far, my favorite part of the internship has been playing with and participating in activities with the kids. They are so much fun to be around and super energetic. I know that I have always enjoyed acting silly and playing different games with young kids but I am pleasantly surprised each time! Even though I’m exhausted at the end of the day and my feet are aching, I know that I’m making a positive impact in the kids’ lives by providing some psychosocial framework and more importantly, some fun!

What is something you have learned from your internship that you didn’t expect?

I learned on the first day that the psychology world is very small! When I first walked into orientation, I saw two other Bryn Mawr students, my old childhood friend, met two students from Villanova, and someone who graduated from Ursinus. Who would have figured there would be so many familiar faces? Another, more serious, thing I did not expect to learn was nonviolent crisis intervention and in-the-moment collaborative problem solving. I have been using different techniques to calm an upset child as well as teach a new expected behavior to them, which is something that I will be able to use for the rest of my life!

Grace Cain ’20: Judge Baker Children’s Center, Camp Baker

Posted on by

Name: Grace Cain
Class Year: 2020
Major: Psychology
Hometown: Chicago

Internship Organization: Judge Baker Children’s Center, Camp Baker
Job Title: Undergraduate Counselor
Location: Boston/Westwood, Mass.

counselors

What’s happening at your internship?

This summer I am working as a camp counselor at Camp Baker, a treatment camp based out of Judge Baker Children’s Center in Boston. Camp Baker is an STP (Summer Treatment Program) for children with ADHD and other behavioral difficulties. The program uses individualized rewards and consistent discipline in the form of a point system as well as a timeout protocol to help children regulate their emotions and behavior. As a camp counselor, I spend five days a week from 7:30 a.m. to 5 p.m. with 13 6 and 7-year-old children. Camp Baker works to emulates a general camp environment, while also implementing therapeutic techniques to improve the emotional regulation of campers. The two cornerstones of the program are delivering discipline in a neutral and consistent manner when campers are dysregulated (unable to control their behavior), and providing specific and constant praise when campers are behaving appropriately.

Why did you apply for this internship?

I wanted to gain more experience in a clinical setting with children to further determine if clinical work is what I would like to do in the future. During my job search, I found a lot of positive testimonies from parents about Camp Baker that made the program seem like a great place to work.

camp

Can you talk about the skills you are learning and why they are important to you?

I have been trained in de-escalation and crisis intervention techniques that are vital in keeping campers from hurting themselves and others. When children are dysregulated and take their anger out on counselors verbally and physically, we keep the children safe and maintain the demand we initially placed on the child. At first I was concerned that children would harbor the negative feelings they expressed for me during these moment of dysregulation. On the contrary, because we maintain demands and then immediately lay on praise at the first sight of positive or neutral behavior, children actually often seem more motivated to improve their behavior after moments of dysregulation and to prove to me that they can do better. This has taught me that being stern is positive for this patient population and that it is a disservice to them and their futures to be too lenient, especially in a misguided effort to feel less negativity in the moment.

What is most rewarding about your internship?

The most rewarding part of my internship is watching campers learn to regulate their emotions, decrease the number of timeouts they receive and earn rewards for good behavior. I have been especially surprised and humbled at the campers’ attempts to prove they can do better.

Aditi Parikh ’20: UC Berkeley Language and Cognitive Development Lab

Posted on by

Name: Aditi Parikh
Class Year: 2020
Major: Psychology
Hometown: Mumbai, India

Internship Organization: UC Berkeley Language and Cognitive Development Lab
Job Title: Research Intern
Location: Berkeley, Calif.

What’s happening at your internship?

Currently, we are in the last two weeks in my internship. The project I am working on involves learning about how children develop selective attention and the changes that their social environment plays on the way their brain develops. The project is exciting and it is interesting to interact with new people everyday and explore Berkeley and its surroundings!

Why did you apply for this internship?

As a psychology major, I am very interested in doing research and eventually grad school. This seemed like the perfect internship in that respect. It is also nice to experience being in a big college like Berkeley and work with people who have very similar interests as me. The lab also researches topics I care about such as looking at brain development for bilinguals and attention styles. The lab also has a very supportive and nurturing environment that encourages all its members to learn and succeed.

What has been your favorite part of this internship?

The internship has been an eye-opening experience for me academically. Each week, we would have reading groups with all the members of the lab in which one of the grad students would pick out papers for everyone to read and discuss. The papers ranged from topics relating to the research being done by the lab to general ethical and novel debates that are ongoing in the field of research. This experience enabled me to learn about topics that are often not discussed in a typical classroom because its relevance to practical and real-life experiences. It was also interesting to hear the view points of people with different experience levels, such as professors who have spent years working in research, as well as interns who have barely spent any time working the lab environment. I am grateful to have had this wonderful experience

Can you give us three adjectives and three nouns that describe your internship experience?

Adjectives: Interesting, dynamic, transformative
Nouns: cute kids, eye tracking, new horizons

Anna Landi ’20: UCSF Emotion, Health and Psychophysiology Lab

Posted on by

Name: AnnaMaria Landi (Anna Landi)
Class Year: 2020
Major: Psychology (Major) and Neuroscience (Minor)
Hometown: Charlottesville, Va.

Internship Organization: University of California, San Francisco (UCSF) Emotion, Health and Psychophysiology (EHP) Lab
Job Title: Summer Research Assistant Intern
Location: San Francisco

What’s happening at your internship?

I am one of 14 interns working at UCSF’s EHP Lab under the direction of Dr. Wendy Berry Mendes this summer. Currently, there are various studies being run and I have been assigned to three in particular — one study explores the effects of perceived racial discrimination on sleep quality, another study examines the influence of parent-child relationships on stress, and the final study tests the efficacy of several stress resilience interventions. I perform numerous roles in my day-to-day work life, including being an experimenter, a technician/operator, and a confederate. I really enjoyed applying the knowledge from the classroom to a laboratory setting and seeing psychological theories come to life.

Why did you apply for this internship?

I wanted to gain research experience at a large institution such as UCSF. I am at the crossroads of deciding if I want to commit to a career in academia and pursue a doctorate degree or if I want to apply my psychology training and education to a profession in industry.

What has been your favorite part of this internship?

Overall, the highlight of this internship is the weekly tutorials and workshops led by a member of the research staff — they talk about their professional and personal life trajectories as well as their current research interests and projects. Personally, it has been extremely helpful to hear about each individual’s unique experience and to hear them talk candidly about the choices they have made to get to this point. I have realized that there is truly no “right” or “wrong” path to take in order to pursue research. Also, it is OK to take time off after undergrad before applying to grad school.

Living in a new city? What has that experience been like for you?

I have framed this experience as a domestic study abroad. I was equal parts excited and nervous before coming to San Francisco as this is the first time that I am living away from my family and friends (besides being at Bryn Mawr). I was really lucky to find a wonderful roommate who is also an intern at the lab. Honestly, it was a steep learning curve trying to balance my work and personal life — it is an interesting feeling to be both working here but also a tourist. Furthermore, navigating a new place can be scary, but embracing being uncomfortable with the unknown and learning to ask for help has been a huge growth experience for me. I am definitely not a local, but I am becoming more and more familiar with the city.