How does an internship make you more of a professional in an undergraduate Social Welfare program
By Netanya Weiss and Jim Stellar
I just started my program’s internship and it has been eye-opening even though I did other smaller internships about which we have written a blog. With this internship, my learning opportunities within social work skills are tremendous, unlimited. I work with clients all day building rapport, practicing communication skills of summarizing, paraphrasing, boundaries, and active listening. I co-facilitating mindfulness and cognitive groups, developing curriculum. With this I find great learning of my client population through working with traumatic brain injury (TBI), through researching tailored groups, but also through the group itself I have learned from my clients. I attend outings with my clients, learning more about accessibility in the community. I say the learning opportunities are unlimited because one of the biggest things I have learned is advocacy. As an undergraduate student intern I have learned that while observational learning is great, becoming assertive and advocating for opportunities and stepping out of one’s comfort zone is where the learning is at.
This is terrific and what I think happens when one takes a real job that goes something smaller such as job-shadowing or a minor internship as you mentioned. So, I am impressed that this internship has so much authenticity. Not only am I impressed but I think your brain is too. What I mean by that is that such a direct experience informs the limbic system (one’s emotional processing) along with your neocortex (one’s cognitive or planning processing). Being present, having clients and colleagues, engaging in nonverbal communication, all not only keeps you active but informs on both the heart and head levels. One of my favorite quotes comes from Oscar Wilde who wrote “A cynic is someone who knows the price of everything and the value of nothing.” Cynic may be too strong of a word, but someone who knows the facts and theories may not understand much beyond them (e.g. like “the price” in the quote above). But by being in this mix, you get much more integration between heart and head and that, I think, gives students insight into issues that helps them understand the profession in much more depth. It is an excellent complement to a fine, classroom-based classical-academic education.
Yes, this internship has so much authenticity. Running the growth and mindfulness meditation groups has been one of the most meaningful parts of my internship experience. At first, I felt a sense of imposter syndrome stepping into this role, and fear of acceptance stepping into my clients already established group trust and connection with each other. But over time, now with the rapport I’ve built with each individual client and adapted sessions attending to unique needs, I’ve grown more confident in my role. Social work is humility. By practicing in client- centered, empowerment- based, and collaborative ways, social workers honor clients as the experts of their own lives. These moments in group sessions when clients connect through cross talk and support each other, it reminds me why I chose social work. My internship has provided me with numerous professional skills but most importantly the core values of social work.
One of our ideas in this blog, as stated above, is that the mind (neocortex) and the heart (limbic system) work together in what we call cognitive-emotional integration. The internship is a perfect place to exercise both processes (vs, the classroom which is typically a cognitive/mind operation and very efficient at it). The fact that both processes happen at once, gives the brain a chance to connect them. To use another quote, a founder of the field of neuroscience, Donald Hebb, famously said that “Neurons that fire together wire together.” Since evolution seems to have “kluged” the neocortex on top of a functioning midbrain (think lizards), the communication between them may not be perfect. One’s thinking does seem perfect as you have a unitary experience of what you are thinking and doing. But we know that is not true as emotions can surprise us, and on an internship perhaps tell you that this field is right for you or wrong for you. One has an idea before going in, but it is always better to “try before you buy” as my mother used to say.
The connection between the thinking brain and emotional brain is an experience I see happen during not only the internship process but also in the field of social work. I noticed that within the classroom, learning is mainly cognitive, primarily analyzing theories and concepts. In the internship experience, it’s these skills and feelings simultaneously. The combined experiences of emotion and critical thinking strengthen the connection between what I know intellectually and what I feel in practice. For example, learning about how to paraphrase during an interaction is so different from actively sitting with a client and implementing this skill during a real conversation, there is a deeper understanding and formation of the client to clinician alliance. I believe the emotions that come up in internship do surprise us, we gain a greater understanding of self and what field or what population is right for us. This emotional response informs us in ways that just thinking cannot. One thing I like about my internship in social welfare is that we not only meet the clients internal needs but also consider broader environmental and structural factors, addressing the systemic barriers and advocating. I’ve been realizing that what they say in class is true, macro social work is present even in micro social work.
