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| Icyf < Service_learning < Students < Internship < Meet_the_interns < Intern_stories < | |||||||
Intern Stories
Scott KoenigAgency: Our Family ServicesTerm: Fall - 2002
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| Our Town Family Center is the family care agency in Tucson where I have decided to intern for this school year. Our Town is a large scale community service agency that extends itself to the community by offering services as varied as street outreach to the homeless, to crisis intervention, to shelters and education groups for all ages, child to parent. I work in two different departments at Our Town: Development and Crisis Intervention. The Crisis department is what attracted me to Our Town; it consists of a 24-hour crisis hotline and then crisis intervention sessions, which can take place either in the homes of the individuals, or on site. When an individual calls the crisis line, they are usually at a breaking point with either themselves or a family member. As an interventionist, I stabilize the situation on the phone, get an understanding of the overall situation, and then schedule three to four appointments with the family. These responsibilities are similar to that of the paid staff, however they are in charge of the cases and paperwork and handle many more than I see as an intern.
As I have worked my way through my junior and senior years of college I have developed a life-long goal to contribute to the betterment of society. At this transitional stage of my life from student to professional, the career aspirations I have extend in three different directions: sport psychology en route to a Division-I diving coach position, marriage and family counseling, or local city government. I decided to do the internship as a first step to exploring the path of marriage and family counseling. While at the UA I have begun to explore my first area of interest by researching in the Sport Psychology Lab and coaching, and after graduation I plan to participate in a fellowship program through the New York City government to explore my last area of interest. I am using this internship as a bridge between college and the professional world. Through my work at Our Town I have learned to be aggressive to get what I want out of an intern experience, yet I have also learned to be flexible. During my first month and a half at the agency, I was not able to work in the Crisis department because I had not completed the training. Unexpectedly, I was asked to assist in a project in the Development office redesigning the agency's brochures for their various programs. This work with the brochures has now opened the door for me to work on an annual Christmas Giving Tree project where our agency recruits businesses to donate gifts and money to give to our clients who will not be able to give their children an adequate Christmas. This will prove to be a rewarding project for me to help little kids get toys and enjoy the holiday season. When we do in-home visit with the families we always go in pairs of two, a paid staff member with experience in counseling and a volunteer/intern. My first opportunity to go to an in-home appointment I took notes and wrote questions that I would ask, and found that I was right on track with the counselor throughout the session. Toward the end of the session, I began to ask my own questions to the families and stated aloud my observations. In the car ride home, the counselor told me how happy she was that I spoke up because I brought up something she had been overlooking. This happening on my first experience greatly boosted my confidence. I would recommend participating in this service learning internship to anyone who has a desire to work with families or children. I have grown a great amount since I started and I have noticed growth with the other students who are participating in the program. It is a great environment to learn and grow because of the group interaction we get bi-weekly. Each of us comes to our seminar eager to share stories from our sites. Going through the experience of working in the "real world" has been cushioned by the support of the group. |
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