A serious internship at the Wadsworth Newborn Screening Program
By Christina Testa and Jim Stellar
This is the 4th blog in a series, following our last blog, that traces her education and its experiential components from undergraduate time at UAlbany to her enrollment in graduate school in the UAlbany School of Public Health – and now to this recent ongoing internship. Of course, all her experiential activities are important (and so was her course work) in helping her to figure out what she wanted to do for her career. But this is the first major internship in graduate school as a part of her Master’s program, and with that background everyone looks at this internship as a serious endeavor.
As Christina herself says,
“This summer has been an experience like none that I have ever had before. This is the first time I am in the professional setting, and it has been a very new experience that has taken some getting used to, but is also a welcome one. This aggressive kind of change was unlike my previous work experiences, but more so than ever, I was ready to enter the professional setting through this internship. When I say I was thrown head first into the professional setting- I mean head first. However, I was very prepared going into it. I had the expectation that an everyday 9-5pm job entailed there would be various tasks and a lot expected from me aside from just my internship project. I hit the ground running this summer because I was prepared to take on these expectations and go above and beyond with everything I do in the internship. Along with completing my project and the everyday tasks in the office, it is important to me to make a professional impression as I have begun to navigate my professional life.
I have been enjoying my time at the Wadsworth Newborn Screening Program. I am currently working on an extended follow-up project for the children diagnosed with Adrenoleukodystrophy (ALD) in New York State since 2013, which is when NYS started screening for ALD. This project has been an extensive process which has involved myself (with the help of my mentor) collecting information about these children including who their primary care physician (PCP) is, and if they are seeing an endocrinologist and neurologist for treatment of ALD. My next steps have been to contact the endocrinologists and neurologists directly and acquire patient record information related to their ALD treatment. The goal of this extended follow-up project is to see the impacts Newborn Screening (NBS) has had on ALD diagnosed babies. The hope is that by screening early, treatment and monitoring for ALD can be done from birth and positive outcomes can be achieved by getting a head start on the genetic implications that come from ALD. Before NBS, children were diagnosed after symptoms onset and caused neurological problems as well as adrenal insufficiency. NBS for ALD has already proven to positively impact children based on the information I’ve collected so far.
As well as my project, I work on the Follow-up team in the office. This is another important responsibility that involves following up on babies with abnormal NBS screens and contacting physicians/specialists to make sure these babies are rescreened or receiving the proper care. So far, I’ve learned a lot about my own capabilities I have never known before doing a professional internship. I can now say my graduate school experience has prepared me to excel in this experience. Furthermore, this experience has proven that contextual learning plays an important role in succeeding. This real life experience applies what I’ve learned in school as well as what I’ve learned while on the job to the professional setting. This new personal/emotional learning experience has taught me more than ever that meaningful experience can help shape a person’s interests and focus/engagement while in the field.”
This narrative gives a very good picture of what is the impact of experience even on a season blog write (remember this is our 4th blog). What it tells us is that learning from experience, of course, goes on one’s entire life and here one’s professional life.
As it does, one of the questions is how does a more seasoned person who is committed to the field integrate that new experience into the existing structure. Does it affect the same brain areas where cognitive and emotional information are already stored from prior experiences? We know that the limbic system (e.g. the amygdala and accumbens at least) react to what is happening, e.g. a stressful day or the satisfaction of accomplishing something as an intern. We also know that the frontal cortex, with its sophisticated columnar structure that we think leads to cognitive operations, integrates this limbic information and translates it into a higher level of sophisticated analysis.
Finally, in this process we know that reflection (e.g. talking about one’s plans with a mentor or maybe writing blogs about them) helps to build that professional wisdom that the student and the institution seeks. But how does a seasoned person react to that new information? Does it reinforce their existing conclusions and add subtly or contradict them and add a need to explore shifting careers? (Here, clearly it is reinforcing.) To get at these questions, we plan to keep writing together. So, look for blog #5.
