For my STEP signature project, I was a remote workplace wellness intern for Buckeye Wellness OSU. Since most of our events were online due to COVID, interns helped to facilitate emails, ensure that zoom events ran smoothly and monitored the chat and Q/A boxes. Also, I conducted literature reviews, complied social media content and other buckeye wellness documents, worked in Qualtrics, and attended and took notes at various virtual discussions or events for the team.
What changed for me the most during this experience was the confidence I had in being knowledgeable in public health and also my professional confidence. It helped me acknowledged that I was ready and qualified enough to apply to graduate school. Often I think that students who are ready to apply for graduate programs or go into the workforce after graduation can suffer from Imposter Syndrome. However, this experience helped me realize that I have an interest in community health and wellness programming. This was my first internship that was directly related to my major and it allowed me to apply my coursework and gain valuable professional skills that I will need as a future public health professional. Also, I think being a virtual intern and working during a global pandemic with Buckeye Wellness gave me a different perspective especially being a public health student. Overall, this experience helped me grow in so many different ways and helped me clarify what I would like to do with my public health degree. I am also happy to say that I will be continuing my internship in the Spring semester.
A lot of my growth in confidence came from attending different meetings during the week. We had two meetings a week with the whole team. One was a operations and logistics meeting and the other was a strategy meeting. Even though I was just an intern, the team make sure that I knew that my input on projects in these meetings was valued. Over time, I grew in my confidence to speak up during these meetings and let my guard down a bit to get to know my coworkers. It was also interesting to get to see how more professional meetings were run in a professional setting rather than one of a student organization. I definitely feel better about meetings and meeting etiquette when comes to other internships or a post-graduate job.
In addition, you could feel like the team felt like you had the skill set and competence to get the tasks you were given done. They did so by always allowing you to ask questions after a debrief and giving you a variety of different projects. I worked on everything from survey creation to creating the monthly content of social media posts. You learn that asking questions does not mark you necessarily as incapable but is a display of thoroughness. Interns were also reinforced with positive encouragement after turning in a project. With such a positive work environment and the opportunities I was given, it allowed my professional confidence to flourish. As the internship has gone on I am more confident in reaching out to members of the Buckeye Wellness team and with the quality of work I can produce.
Involvement in virtual summits and webinars with the team allowed my professional confidence to grow the most. The first was the Summit on Promoting Well-Being and Resilience in Healthcare Professionals. I was in charge of making a wellness toolkit for attendees, putting together wellness tips on slides to run during breaks, helping create posts for the 30 day Make it or Break it challenge after the summit, and even recording a stretching video. Also, during the summit itself, I helped to monitor chat and Q/A boxes. Then, I also worked on the Staying Calm and Well pt.3 webinar series. I was in charge of facilitating emails to presenters, creating weekly slide decks, and monitoring the chat and Q/A boxes during the presentation. Being assigned seemingly important tasks like these helped me grow my professional confidence and skill set exponentially.
Like I mentioned in the first paragraph, I have recently applied to graduate schools for a master’s in public health. I had volunteering and leadership experience but was missing a formal internship experience. Before this internship, I was constantly going back and forth if I had enough experience or was qualified enough to take what seems like a huge step. Within the first month of my internship, I knew that I was ready to take this step and even got a letter of recommendation from one of the team members. This opportunity helped me realize that I would like to work in community health and wellness programming on a team like this. I feel confident in the future public health professional I have the potential to be after graduate school.
Below is a screenshot of the summit I worked on!
