https://growingleaders.com/blog/first-soft-skill-develop-students/#sthash.z4nhZw6s.dpbs
This article discusses young adults entering the workforce. Often, workers in their twenties lack life and work experience making them act inappropriately in the workplace. When these young workers were children, their parents may have been too permissive and needed to be more critical. Parents were too afraid to hurt their children's self-esteem, making their performance suffer. Also, since this generation is very accustomed to using technology for anything and everything. Older workers prefer face-to-face communication whereas the newer workers are not able to communicate well when it is not through a screen. What these new workers need in an increase in social intelligence. They lack this type of intelligence so they cannot connect with people or influence them effectively. If they understood this concept more, there would not be such a gap between the age differences and they would understand their place more. They would be less likely to be arrogant and be more considerate towards others. Since I am interested in psychology, the concept of social intelligence interests me greatly. I love to learn more about how the brain works and what makes people how they are and it seems social intelligence is a large answer to why people communicate they way they do. If everyone had higher social intelligence, I think we would all get along a lot better.
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Me essential question: How can I, as a mental health professional, assess collected data to devise effective prevention programs?
I selected this essential question because my mentor is prevention specialist of my county and this is her job. I am interested in how she creates her programs and in the potential for the application of similar strategies for mental health professionals. I am excited to continue to build knowledge that will eventually be my job. I think this question gives me a lot of room to research mental health, drug, and alcohol prevention along with the potential psychological perspectives behind the strategies. Since I am interested in mental health and psychology I this question will provide me with a lot of interesting information. Ms. Simpson has given me so much knowledge already this year. She is a vital partner in my education because she has opened my eyes to a new world: work. Before I began my internship, I had no idea what working in the real world would be like. I have been preparing for college since my freshman year with abundant AP classes, but high school has little to offer to prepare you for your future career. I have a new appreciation for people who work diligently in the workforce.
Not only has Ms. Simpson helped me realize what working is really like, she has also provided a new perspective for me about how many jobs are available within the field of psychology. Previously, when I thought about psychology, therapists and psychologists were the first and only professions that came to mind. Now I realize that there a lot of careers that can utilize the knowledge gained by a degree in psychology like human resources, sales, and management. All three of these careers require a lot of interaction with people and it would be helpful to understand how the human brain works to be successful in the field. These jobs may not be the right fit for me, but it is good to know that there are other options available. While this internship is a chance for me to get to learn about Ms. Simpson’s field, I try to make sure that I make her life easier instead of more complicated. During my time with her, I have done some paperwork for her to get more important things done. I have addressed letters, made copies, and put together mentor applications for her while listening to webinars she to attends. When discussing the current youth population, I have offered her my perspective on what life is like now in school to help her get a better idea of how to reach teens. I hope by the end of this year I will have helped her just as much as she has helped me. My profile: I am currently a junior at Lambert High School actively involved in many service organizations and I am taking multiple AP classes. I have been a dancer for 14 years and I love being able to help others. Last year I became aware of the opportunity available to me to be a participant in the Honors Mentorship Program. My counselor recommended the program when I expressed interest in working during the upcoming school year. She set up a meeting for me with Ms. Henderson to discuss the program and I decided to apply. At that time, I was working as a dance assistant at my dance studio with young ballerinas and I was taking AP psychology at school. At some point, I came to the realization that I really wanted to work in psychology and possibly with children because of these two experiences. I have always loved working with kids and I think I would like to have a career that would involve helping them. This made my decision to be a part of the Honors Mentorship Program easy because I knew it would help me learn more about what I am passionate about and help me decide if this was a field I would want to continue to pursue in college. My internship: I am an intern for the Forsyth County Prevention Specialist, Lindsey Simpson. I met Ms. Simpson for the first time at the end of my sophomore year. Ms. Simpson works in Student Support Services on the same floor with the psychologists for the county. She strives to reduce the abuse of alcohol and drugs by adolescents within the county. This year she is also focusing on promoting mental health and raising awareness of the rise of mental health problems in our county. As Ms. Simpson’s intern, I am allowed to sit in on meetings to learn more about her job and how she tackles the difficult task of promoting prevention. Currently, we are working together to create infographics and pamphlets about how alcohol affects the brain of an adolescents. I also help Ms. Simpson with a lot of administrative tasks like making copies, scanning papers, and assembling training folders. Although these tasks do not seem very important, it has helped me realize what work is really like. My future: This internship has helped me become aware of many different job opportunities in field of child psychology. Next year, I hope to continue the exploration of other career options. Hopefully, my internship experiences will allow me to make an informed decision on my college major and on what kind of job I would like to pursue. Ms. Simpson and IScanning applications into my computer to make electronic copiesMailing recently created binders to all the schools in Forsyth county I have now been working at the Forsyth County Board of Education office for three months as an intern with the Prevention Specialist, Ms. Simpson. I expected her work to be mostly interpersonal, but in reality a lot of paperwork has to be done to properly document Ms Simpson's work. Instead of the majority of her time being spent with other professionals, she actually invests a significant amount of time creating and organizing the necessary paperwork. I have made hundreds of copies, spent hours converting mentor program applications from prior years into PDF files, and filed many recent mentor program applications.
The internship has been amazing, but there have been some aspects of the experience I was not anticipating. Ms. Simpson's job has an unexpected creative side. She has a grant that allows her to design several campaigns to educate both parents and teenagers about the abuse of alcohol and drugs. These campaigns require her to come up with eye-catching billboards; informative, yet appealing pamphlets; and presentations that keep the attention of her audience. Ms. Simpson also has to create and conduct surveys so she gets updated information about our county and state. I knew she had to rely on research for information she uses, but I was not aware of the extent of research she has to conduct. During my internship I have learned how to remove staples without a staple remover, unjam a copier, and create an assembly line to stuff folders quickly. But really, I have learned how to improvise in inconvenient situations and make them productive. I now know that some things, like technology, require patience and that sometimes you just have to work through the issue. Last but not least, I have figured out how to make boring work go more quickly and how to be as productive as possible. Scott, Michelle. "Teaching Note—Understanding of Suicide Prevention, Intervention,
and Postvention: Curriculum for MSW Students." Journal of Social Work Education, vol. 51, no.1, Jan-Mar2015, pp. 177-185. EBSCOhost,doi:10.1080/10437797 .2015.979095 At the beginning of the excerpt the author describes the increasing numbers of people attempting and committing suicide, addressing how it has become a large issue as of recently. She states that many people who have attempted suicide had seen social workers before they had attempted, exemplifying that many social workers have failed to see the signs of suicidal people. She implies that social workers are in a way failing at their jobs because they are not able to give proper aid to those suffering. The main issue she is trying to point out to the reader is that social workers (and others, but she only has the power to directly educate potential service workers) do not get enough training in identifying and aiding in people who may have suicidal thoughts or tendencies. The rest of the article is used to describe a class she has developed specifically for training students in the second year of earning a master’s degree in social work. This source is helpful for me because it provides a unique perspective on the issues of suicide and how the author is doing their part to erase the stigma and give aid. Currently, I am thinking about doing my Capstone project on prevention of suicide with a psychological perspective. I would like to identify the psychological reasons for people committing suicide, talk about the increasing numbers of this act, and discuss ways people are currently trying to give aid to those struggling. I will use this journal in my Capstone to further discuss ways that education about prevention (within mental health) is a subject that needs to be talked about more. With the increase in suicides and the decline of mental health, education about mental health is a way to help aid in the prevention of suicide. This excerpt gives me a specific example of how people are beginning to train others in how to identify signs of suicide and what to do about it (and an example of raising awareness with education). This can go along with how many principles in our county are asking to be trained in understanding the signs so they can identify it within their staff. It also goes with teachers being trained to identify the signs within students. http://growingleaders.com/blog/ Blog where post was found
This post brings up an interesting view on internships. The author, Tim Elmore, begins describing his friend's recent -not exactly pleasant- experience with interns. Elmore presents a solution for his friend; Elmore tells his friend to start describing the internship as a twelve week interview or a trial run. Later in his post, he describes the top four qualities he looks for in an intern: teachability, initiative, responsibility, and energy. For my internship, I will be working with my mentor for 10 months. My interview is just a tad bit longer than 12 weeks, but the ideas Elmore present remain relevant. My mentor will be an important resource for me when I am in the work force for references and she is giving me an amazing opportunity to practice being in the professional world. I know I need to be responsible by being on time and doing my best work possible. I need to take initiative in the times when my mentor is busy and I am left alone. What is most relevant to me is that I have high energy usually when it comes to my internship because I am very interested in learning about her work and I love the opportunity given to me. Working in the professional field requires work ethic. Work ethic can be defined as the principle that hard work is worthy of reward. For my Honors Mentorship Program class I was given the assignment to take an Occupational Work Ethic Inventory (OWEI) test online to determine my level of work ethic through the examination of my interpersonal skills, initiative skills, and dependability skills. These three qualities are the qualities that have been determined to best define work ethic and are the most sought after qualities by employers.
The test was 50 questions and each question gave a word with the answer choices never, almost never, seldom, sometimes, usually, almost always, and always. The answers to these questions is what determines your work ethic. At the end, they give you your number for each of the qualities out of 7. They then provide a chart that compares your numbers to the average male and female workers. I learned that I am very dependable and I am about average for interpersonal skills, but I am slightly below average in my initiative skills. The ways in which we communicate with people when talking to family members, friends, and potential employers changes drastically. Why is that? Our verbal communication, non-verbal communication, and written communication tends to change from formal to informal to even inappropriate depending on who we are attempting to communicate with.
Talking to these three different groups of people is a completely different situation. Family members have known you your entire life and they know your how intelligent you are, your values, and your personality. Because they are aware of these qualities, we tend to be less guarded around them and we can be ourselves. There is no need to be formal with family members but we still need to be polite and personable. With friends, the situation is always really casual and informal. Your friends are not going to judge you (if they are quality friends) and they are the people we tend to be completely ourselves around without any limits. When communicating with our potential employers the situation is very formal and we try to present the most "perfect" versions of ourselves to sell ourselves and to present ourselves in the best light. The expectations of each group of people changes as well and this even further changes the way we communicate. Family expects you to be polite, to speak with a respectful tone, and to use proper grammar when communicating via technology. Friends do not really care how you act because they know and love you. Grammar is not necessary when communicating with friends and we do not tend to filter what or how we say things when we are with them. With an employer, they expect you to be very polite, proper, and personable when communicating with them because they will be your future boss in control of your employment situation. When I communicate with my mentor I will be sure to have positive non-verbal communication and I will make sure all of our written forms of communication has a sense of professionalism to them. They are giving me a huge honor letting me intern with them, so I will be sure to treat them with the most respect and always show my gratitude to them through my communication. |