Reflective Essay: Internship And Personal Development

At first, I was very skeptical about the whole concept of an internship. Given the size of Providence, an organization that spans five states and employs over 82,000 people, I felt like a drop of water in a vast ocean. The idea of learning anything in such environment seemed unrealistic, let alone contributing to the organization’s growth. Most of all, I was conflicted by the notion of giving 200 hours of my life away without any sort of monetary compensations. In addition to incurring an implicit and explicit cost during my internship at Providence, after doing calculations I came to a conclusion that I would have made at least $2000 over the course of ten weeks if I were to take a part-time minimum wage job. From the economic feasibility perspective, I was losing money instead of making money. At the time, it seemed a preposterous idea to continue doing what I was doing, but in retrospect, the long-term impact of internship on my future career and personal development is priceless.

Although I have been working in the retail industries and education institutions for several years now, I did not have any form of experience in the healthcare field

prior to this internship other than a few times I had volunteered in a nursing homes. Given my aspiration to peruse a career in a healthcare, the lack of experience in this field would have left me at disadvantaged. Nevertheless, this internship gave the opportunity to meet and work with such an incredible and smart people that mentored and inspired me to expand my professional networking. Through this internship, I was able to meet people from various departments within Providence, including gastroenterology department, information security department, network security department t, and educational department, and learn about their duties and day-to-day responsibilities.

Most importantly, this internship exposed me to new ideas and perspectives, allowing me to rise beyond personal confinement and see the world from a different perspective.

It gave me a chance to apply the knowledges and skills that have acquired in the classroom over the past years and gain a real-world hands-on experience that I can use as stepping stone to advance my career. Thanks to this internship, I now have a better understanding of how the healthcare system operates, how insurance claim process works as well as navigate through electronic health record database without difficulty. In a nutshell, this internship gave me a firsthand exposure to the healthcare environment in addition to opening the doors of opportunities that allowed me to obtain an indispensable skills that would serve me for the rest of my

life.