September and I met during the last week of classes after our final Peer Health Advocates meeting to discuss my experience in this course. Here’s what we discussed:
- What do you feel you learned from this experience?
I think the most valuable things I learned from this experience came from the informational interviews that I completed and the Gordon Career Center events I attended. These were surprisingly helpful in allowing me to plan for the future as well as exposing me to new options for career paths that I may not have otherwise considered. I also learned that, for me, I definitely need to make a point of setting harder deadlines for myself as a student in the form of scheduling weekly checkins with my supervisor on a project I choose to take up. Otherwise, with the stress of the semester, the non-graded things on my plate get pushed aside–which definitely happened a bit with my work in this course and as a PHA. Next semester is another opportunity to start fresh and try again.
- How did this work complement your academic, extracurricular, or career interests?
As I described, in terms of career interests, it definitely helped me plan for the future. Making me meet with a Gordon Career Center advisor was especially helpful because, if it had not been for this course, I probably would not have done that. As a result, I wouldn’t have known, for example, that I need to be shadowing health care professionals at the moment, and I wouldn’t have known all about the committee review process that needs to happen before I apply to med school.
- What could I have done differently to support you in your role?
Again, I think in the future, scheduling more consistent meetings would have kept me on track a bit more, and that’s definitely something I’ll implement in future semesters to ensure I put out my best work.
- Looking at the six Ideals into Practice competencies, where do you feel you developed the most this semester through your work here?
I’ll be honest in saying that I can’t say the tasks I had to complete were super helpful in developing the 6 given competencies. However, if anything, I’d say my creativity developed simply because I had to find ways to spin these assignments in a way that would help me in my future career plans (like applying to medical school), which I’d say I was pretty successful in doing.
