Hey guys!
With summer just around the corner, I decided this week I would take a little trip down memory lane to last summer, when I interned in Washington D.C.! I interned with So Others Might Eat (SOME), an organization that aims to end the cycle of homelessness by helping the homeless population of D.C. get back on their feet. Since I am a health sciences major interested in healthcare, I interned in their medical clinic helping them with daily tasks.
I managed to get this internship through the Shepherd Higher Education Consortium on Poverty (SHECP), which is an organization that aims to increase awareness of the realities of poverty and how to combat it among college students. Each school that is a part of the consortium offers a Poverty Studies minor, but you do not need to be a poverty studies minor to apply for the program. I found out about this opportunity through Dr. Slining, who is one of the health sciences professors, and applied through Furman. I was lucky enough to be selected along with 4 other Furman students to participate in the program!
SHECP has internship sites all over the US, so once I was selected, I had to go through an interview process in order to match with the internship that was best suited for me. Each internship location has several other internships so that each location has a cohort of about 6-12 students. Additionally, SHECP gives each student a stipend of about $14/day in order to help us learn how to budget and get an idea of what it’s like to stretch out each dollar. However, Furman did provide a stipend to help me with travel! The idea is that the cohort lives together, cooks together, and comes home at the end of the day to share stories from our respective internships. I lived in a an apartment building with about 12 other students from my cohort! (We had about 2 or 3 to an apartment).
Each day at SOME was a new experience. As an intern, I helped take the vitals of patients, schedule their future appointments, and scan their prescriptions to pharmacies nearby. On days when the eye doctor was around, I prepped patients for their visits with her. Additionally, I led a weekly health education class to a group of 6-10 patients of Isaiah House, SOME’s mental health day program. My days spent at SOME not only helped me further my medical knowledge, but also opened my eyes to many issues facing a large population of America today. The things I learned and saw at SOME definitely will help me become a better healthcare provider in the future, and I couldn’t have done it without The Furman Advantage!
See you next week!
Gabe