Wednesday, March 19, 2008

Me & My Shadow


We were assigned out internships and at first I wasn’t too happy with mine. I had hoped to intern closer to home either at our local high school or a juvenile detention center. Instead I was assigned to a mental health facility two hours away from my home.

It turned out that my assignment was coveted by my fellow class mates who unlike me actually have experience working in hospital settings. I didn’t see what the big ooh and ahh was about in terms of this particular placement. “Man how did you get that?!” seemed to be the popular refrain in class. Several days later I found out what the big whoop was. It seemed that unlike all of the other internships given out the school doesn’t pick it out for you, they pick you and it’s a very prestigious internship.




I got an early morning call from one of the directors in my school. “Congratulations Mia!” she gushed “You were personally hand picked for this! No one in the program had the qualifications or the personality they were looking for but you!” The woman seemed so happy for me I took her word that being chosen was an honor. Maybe the commute wouldn’t be too bad I thought two hours each way I’ll get a lot of reading done while traveling.

It seemed that a paper I wrote on why I had chosen to get a degree in social work coupled with my psych degree had been what gotten me the internship. Oh yeah and my sense of humor. I was following my mentor around yesterday sitting in on meetings and counseling sessions, “shadowing” it’s called. I was his shadow and for the life of me I couldn’t get “Me and My Shadow” out of my head. Then as if on cue my mentor starts singing the very same song…dude get outta my head!. I fought the urge to start tap dancing right then and there, I didn’t want to scare him. Instead I laughed and sang along with him. He turned to look at me kind of shocked, “You have a sense of humor and musical knowledge?!” I nodded my head, “You’re going to need both in this field! “ he said. For the rest of the day in between working and shadowing we traded quips and musical references.

At the end of my shift my mentor looked at me, “Mia we usually don’t do this…. but you’re going to need a year long internship in the fall. Would you be interested in working here? I’d love to keep you here.” I accepted and later on found out my mentor has a degree in fine arts had actually worked on Broadway, hence his love of old ass music. Who knew my so called wit and love of musical theatre and MGM musicals would actually do me some good?

Labels: internship

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