Eight Steps to Getting the Internship You Want
Start
Thinking about Your Own Priorities before Looking at What is Available
by John T. Carlsen, Psy.D.
Even
before you start reading the web pages for prospective internship sites, you
owe it to yourself to take some time, shift your focus, and prepare
yourself internally. You need a chance to figure out what you actually
want and the time to write it down while it is still clear in your mind.
Otherwise, you are
likely to lose track of it completely. The last thing you need right now is
to start by reading about what different sites offer. By filling your
mind with what is available and what other people want, you leave no room
for articulating your own priorities. Instead, the space for them
continues to shrink.
More importantly,
as you focus your attention on how you will fit yourself into what
selection committees want (an impossible task) and obsessing about why you
have not developed more impressive qualifications by now, you start down
a path of increasing anxiety rather increasing confidence that would come
from clarifying what you have to offer right now.
At this point, your dreams and aspirations and professional goals are probably
still tentative - not to mention rather fuzzy. You might never have put them
into words before now. In fact, you might still find yourself in the early
phases of uncovering your natural gifts and dabbling in your curiosity. This
is entirely appropriate and expectable as you begin to identify your strengths
and training needs. So, the last thing you can afford is to run
roughshod over them while preparing to write your essays.
How can you avoid making
this unfortunate mistake?
Ideally, you will begin by treating your training goals
and interests as seedlings that you have just planted: You cannot use a
fire hose to water them. You cannot expose them to too much direct
sunlight. And you certainly cannot expect to harvest anything substantial from them over the next few months. The most you can legitimately expect
at this point is to start learning to separate which sprouts are plants and
which are weeds and to recognize which plants you would like to cultivate further.
Using a different metaphor, it is as though you are out for dinner and have just received the menu. If you truly want to enjoy your meal, you
will not start reading the menu too carefully or allow your waiter to recite the evening's specials
too soon. Instead, you might pause for a few minutes and think about what you have a taste for eating.
Otherwise, you will lose this chance to consult your own taste buds.
Of course, if you were simply grabbing a quick meal before the theater, this approach would be fine:
There would be no reason to spend this much time. Your priority would simply be satisfying your hunger immediately. But, if you
have invested a great deal of money and time in preparing for this meal (as you
have in preparing for your year-long internship) and expect something worthwhile to come from it, you owe it to yourself to
set aside enough time to consider what you actually want.
The whole point of beginning the process this early is that you can allow yourself plenty of time to mull over what you want to do in the future and to begin articulating your preferences.
(During my days as a fine dining waiter, I was amazed at how many customers
would come into the restaurant at 7:00, order a five-course French meal, and
suddenly demand their checks because they had 8:00 theater tickets.
Often, they would ask us to slide their salad and Strawberry Napoleon or
Gateau St. Honore into to-go containers and then scramble out the door,
leaving half-full plates of Cassoulet and Steamed Lobster in Buerre Blanc
sitting on their tables. I often joked with fellow waiters that we
should open a Drive-through window. If these people were willing to
spend $75 per person for fast food, we were clearly missing an important
market niche. As a career and writing coach, I am similarly amazed at
the number of students who will dash off and send the first drafts of their
internship essays a week before they are due after committing themselves to an
investment of nearly $100,000 for their doctorate in clinical
psychology. Do you really want to count yourself among them?)
If not, the following guidelines will make sure that you spend
your time and energy wisely in getting what you want.
1. Find a copy of last year's (2004-05) APPIC directory.
You can probably borrow one from a classmate who applied last year or use a copy in your school's library. APPIC (The Association of Psychology Postdoctoral and Internship Centers) produces both
on-line and print versions of this directory. Your best strategy is to start
with the printed directory so you have access to all of the information in front of you and can scan it a page at a
time, paying adequate attention so your own preferences and priorities can
emerge and enough time to capture them on paper..
2. Set aside a few hours when you can sit alone in a quiet place with a pen, a notebook, and no distractions. Starting at the beginning, page through the directory and scan the information about each site. In this first go-around, you simply want to capture your first impressions without giving them any more thought.
Jot down the contact information about any sites or programs that peak your curiosity or draw your attention.
3. Go back through your notes - after you have finished the first
go-around - and take more time to flesh out these first impressions. What, exactly, caught your attention as you looked at each site? Was it something about the location? Something about the population(s) served at that site? Or, is it simply that this site would enable you to move closer to (or farther away from) your home
area? Your goal in this step is to articulate, as accurately as possible, what matters to you most in choosing your ideal site(s). (Full disclosure:
I initially applied to counseling centers across the country, from UCLA and
the University of Texas at Austin to Boston and George Washington
Universities. I considered all of the places I had ever wanted to live
and where I had dreamed about training. I sent applications,
interviewed, and, ultimately, received offers from several of
them. After many hours of researching and comparing different
sites, however, my final ranking boiled down to a few simple facts: Ohio State University offered the range of experiences I wanted, It was located in a pleasant city away from Chicago but close enough for convenient return visits. And, most importantly, I thought I could afford to live in Columbus on the stipend they offered.
Although I wound up declining offers from the more exciting and glamorous
places, I knew what I was capable of accomplishing and why I was settling on
the choice I made. Your priorities might be completely different.)
4. Ignore the statistics that show the ratio of applications to available positions and any other information that makes the site appear competitive. This information might cause you to focus too much on your statistical chances and distract you from thinking about what you want. It might also discourage your from applying. Ultimately, you are not truly competing with other applicants. While you and your fellow applicants might have trained in similar settings, you each came away with different qualifications. Also, you will bring very distinctive personal qualities and learning interests to your internship year. (My own experience proves how this works: As an applicant from a clinical Psy.D. program,
it turns out that I had faced unbelievable competition from counseling psychology Ph.D. applicants. Yet, by focusing on what I wanted and why I wanted it, I was successful in matching with my first choice, The Ohio State University. Fortunately, only after matching
did I find out that it is one of the oldest and most sought-after sites in counseling
psychology programs. If I had known this fact ahead of time, who knows how many possibilities I might have overlooked and missed out on?)
5. Instead, concentrate on uncovering why you might want to train at each particular site.
For, example, you might realize that you have always wanted to live in Boston or New Orleans or to work at a Big 10 university or
a prestigious medical center. On the other hand, maybe you dream about doing some mountain climbing or surfing on the weekends (assuming that you have your
dissertation well on the way!). Your internship year offers an ideal opportunity for testing out this possibility. Most of us can do nearly anything for just a year. In other words, this
first phase is not the time to worry about being serious and professional in your priorities - there is plenty of time for that later as you move toward actually comparing training programs and writing your essays.
6. The key to success in matching with an internship is making sure it offers the training and overall experience you want.
As mentioned above, if you start by filling your mind with what sites seem to want in their applicants or only what you think is realistic, you will almost certainly wind up selling yourself short and settling for something far beneath your potential.
Again, never limit your options by going after only what you believe is possible when you have the opportunity to pursue what you want.
7. As you work on this list of prospective sites, also write down any other ideas, inspirations, or preferences that pop into your mind. Maybe you are drawn to the intensity and fast pace of an emergency room, where you
could learn to conduct mental health assessments with clients in crisis. Or, maybe you would prefer to work with university students to help them in choosing satisfying career directions and adjusting to life away from their families. On the other hand, you might want to learn the differences between providing treatment in rural and urban settings.
Regardless of what draws your interest or stimulates your curiosity, do
everything you can to capture and use this information in your applications
and interviews.
8. When you have completed this first list, take some time to run it by
other people who know you well - your classmates, your spouse/partner, and a
favorite professor or two. Even take some time to discuss it with your current supervisor. After working closely with you for several months, he or she has a perspective on your training needs and interests that no one else shares.
By listening carefully to their feedback, you might hear some realities about
yourself that you have overlooked before now. After compiling their suggestions, set this list aside for several days to allow you some distance and the chance to mull over your options in the back of your mind.
Ultimately, regardless of what others believe about your potential in matching with quality internship training, you owe yourself the opportunity to put your own interests and priorities into words. Each of these preferences says something important about who you are as a trainee, something you cannot afford to lose sight of in your search for an appropriate internship match. Each one also says something important about who you are becoming as an emerging professional. You also cannot afford to lose sight of any developing interests, no matter how tentative or untested they are. You must capture each developing interest at this early point in your application process before it becomes buried under your preoccupation with presenting your credentials.
Otherwise, your own preferences are likely to become submerged under the weight of other people's priorities. Selection committees want to choose their ideal applicants. Your training department wants to report impressive matching statistics. Your family and friends want you to graduate.
Aside from you, who will make sure you get what you want?
John T. Carlsen, Psy.D. is
a licensed clinical psychologist who trains and supervises psychology interns
and externs. He offers personal coaching and training resources for graduate
students applying for internships and post-doctoral jobs. Click here
to learn more about how to write
effective applications and prepare for interviews. Click here
to submit comments, questions, or suggestions for future newsletter topics.
