First Outing

This morning started out with a great morning circle! It was really exciting to see the new student fitting in and working on making new friends. Building Bridges is a behavioral school, so the students' are all used to various behaviors that are seen throughout the day and this morning one of the students start screaming. With this students great needs (he is on the Autism Spectrum) he needs to be restrained and have his head held back so he is unable to bite. This morning he needed to be restrained twice which is a great improvement from the four that he needed on Thursday. The children all had a successful morning of school.

Every Wednesday and Friday we going on an outing somewhere. Today we went to a park by our old school. The children did great taking the bus and we arrived at the park. That is when things really started going downhill for us. One of the students was playing with other children and they had squirt guns. The Building Bridges child was not paying attention to where he was squirting and ended up hitting one of the other boy's father in the face. I took the squirt gun away from the child and he started screaming extremely loud. We have a rule at Building Bridges that if we are playing with a toy, we pay attention to our surroundings. This child knew this rule and decided to break it anyway. This created great problems at the park because of the loud horrible sounds that he makes when he is angry, so he was taken away from the park by one of my co-teachers to be removed from the situation. We are really trying to work on this child's attitude throughout the day and his social skills.

I have had so many great experiences so far that they are hard to remember them all, and I cannot wait to have more!

First Week at OHSU

I finished what has been an exciting, educational and blur of a first week at my internship with OHSU. I started my internship by showing up to the wrong building at OHSU as I went to the Biomedical Research building instead of the Biomedical Information and Communication building. Dr. Sakaguchi was kind enough to walk over to where I thought I was supposed to be and he walked me over to where I was supposed to be. My first three hours at OHSU basically turned out to be a crash course on what types of degrees OHSU offers in the Healthcare industry. After Dr. Sakaguchi taught me everything about the three programs and degrees, he instructed me on what he would need me to do over the summer. The rest of the day was spent doing research about other programs that offer degrees in the Healthcare industry. My second day I was asked to find out what the requirements were for a school of Public Health to get certified by the College of Education and Public Health (CEPH). Once I found the procedures to become certified I had to put them into a slideshow presentation that I presented to the Division Head and Dr. Sakaguchi on Wednesday. I felt pretty comfortable doing the research and making the slideshow and was happy that I had done so many of them in college. I was a little nervous presenting on Wednesday but I felt Linfield had prepared me pretty well. The presentation went smoothly and both Dr. .Sakaguchi and the head of the department were pleased with my presentation. I was happy that my Career Explorations class at Linfield had taught me how to make a professional slideshow presentation because it made me a lot more confident while I gave my presentation. The Career Explorations class really prepared me well on how to carry myself in a professional environment and after doing so many job shadows, I really felt pretty comfortable being dressed up and acting like a "grown up." The division that I work with at OHSU is pretty casual and I like the fact that everyone is so easy going. I feel that my Marketing class has really prepared me well for all of the market research that I have been doing and all of my business classes have really helped with preparing me for the business language and terms that are used. As my internship progresses I expect that I will be able to give more input on decision making instead of just supplying background information like I am doing right now. I think my tasks will become more complicated as well. I feel good about working with Dr. Sakaguchi because he is very trusting and answers my questions with very good explanations. I usually eat lunch with him and talk to him for a few minutes after work in a more casual manner and I feel that in these conversations I might learn just as much as from all of the work that I am doing. Dr. Sakaguchi is a very experienced and has accomplished many things in his life, I am looking forward to working with him and learning from him for the next few weeks!

Orthopedic Internship

I completed my third internship experience. This time I felt much more relaxed in the medical setting. I knew what to expect and nothing really had changed. However, they did have a new medical assistant working with the patients. She was very kind and even let me help out with taking patient’s vitals. She kept mentioning that it was stressful being an employee of a hospital and having to follow their rules and regulations while working for an independent physician who had his own set of rules and expectations. This is something that I had never considered to be an issue before until now. Throughout the day I witnessed her discussions on the phone and with others about how stressful it was to try to make both parties “happy.” I wonder if she will still be working when I go back for my fourth internship.

The patients were wonderful to observe. I am fascinated by the various levels of pain tolerance reported by the patients for each of their medical issues. Some patients have a pinky sprain and can hardly function without heavy medication while an elderly patient who just had a joint replacement two weeks ago is already up an walking and “never touched the stuff” when asked if he needed anything for the pain.

I recognized a few patients from the last couple of times I was interning at the clinic. One of them recognized me. They all seem to be fine with me in the room with the doctor after he identifies who I am. I find that the patients will either make eye contact with the doctor only or on the rare occasion will glance in my direction. Surprisingly, quite a few of the patients brought in a “friend” or spouse. One patient’s friend spent the examination telling me about their friend’s medical issues at the same time the doctor was quizzing the patient. That definitely made things difficult for the doctor to understand.

Next time I will get to take some stitches out—should be exciting!

- Lily

OHSU Start

Hi my name is Alex White and I am doing a four week internship at OHSU starting tomorrow, June 20th. I will be interning with Dr. Ronald Sakaguchi who is a dean at the Dental School at OHSU and is also in charge of the Hospital Administration program as well. My internship will consist of doing market research to help develop a marketing plan as well as doing research and developing the business plan for the Hospital Administration program at OHSU. I am pretty nervous about starting as I already feel a little overwhelmed but I'm also very excited. I did an orientation this past Tuesday so I at least know where to park and how to navigate through the maze of buildings up on the hill, I got to ride in the tram which was pretty cool too. Tomorrow will actually be the first time I meet Dr. Sakaguchi in person, as I only did a phone interview with him before I got the internship. I am excited to start working with him and learning from him because of his background and all of his experience. He got his PHD in dentistry, practiced dentistry, then taught at the Dental School and eventually became the dean of the Dental School. He also got an MBA which has led him to becoming in charge of the Hospital Administration program.
I am very thankful that I got this internship because I was only able to apply at the last minute. I had already accepted an internship at the sales company Up N' Automated until the second to last week of school when I was told that my internship had been dropped. The person who was going to be my supervisor at the company had received a promotion and wasn't going to be in town during the summer and because the company was very small, there wasn't any other employees that would be able to supervise and teach me. I had been accepted for the internship in April so I had not been paying attention to any other types of internship opportunities for the summer so I was devastated when they called me to tell me that my internship had been cancelled for the summer. However, now I am very eager to start and I know once I start that I won't be so nervous. I am sure that I will learn a lot through my research, work and just from being around Dr. Sakaguchi. I have never done an internship like this before so it will be a very new and exciting experience!

Building Bridges

Hi my name is Liz Brown and I am working at Building Bridges in Portland, Oregon.

Week Three started off quite interesting at my Internship. I am working at a Behavioral School for children with various learning and social disabilities. Today was the start of Summer Camp, which meant that their regular school schedule switched around and for some children this is difficult as they do not like change. During Summer Camp I will be a Kindergarten/1st grade classroom teacher for the most part and then I will also be spending some time in the Pre-school classroom. Throughout the summer I will be teaching the children science by doing fun experiments that really getting their minds thinking. I will also be starting teaching Language for Learning, which is a program that helps the children with developing their overall skills of listening to directions. It has been a very exciting learning experience so far, as this is the field that I want to be working when I am done with college. There is so much going on throughout the day that it has been very important for me to be super patient with the children and also help them work on their flexibility. There is one child that has been a struggle the past three weeks, and also was a struggle summer for me. We (my two cooperating teachers and I) have been working with this child on social skills, how to walk appropriately in the classroom, to be conscience of his body space, as well as others personal space, and his confidence in school work. Being in a behavioral intervention classroom is so beneficial for the students that I a working with, there three Autistic students, one student with ADHD and behavioral difficulties, one student with Aspergers, one student that suffers Prenatal Cocaine Exposure. The Summer Camp entails: making friends, cooperative games and activities, sports, role play, outings, team work, science and environmental studies, and math and reading practice. It has been amazing for me to see the growth even in three weeks with the students knowledge and minor improvements in behavior.

Office work & Farmer's market

As dazed as I was after finally done with finals last Thursday, I am now back on my feet and ready for summer. Received the next task from Ginger on Tuesday. Keywords: Excel, database, ASAP.

Great! I've been feeling like a housewife for awhile now with only packing and cooking to occupy my time for now. Everyday I torment myself with doubts of being here for summer. I have failed to find a job on campus- this was an outcome I did not expect. I've made the mistake of building my entire summer plan around it, and every rejections left me looking like a fool to myself. Or perhaps my biggest mistake was to have too much hope- for it was shattered mercilessly and I was too baffled to prepare myself.

I was determined to save for my parents by staying here, and invest in the future with an internship and possibly summer classes. But in the end I was left choosing between spending $1000 for a ticket home, or the same amount to stay here.

But like a quote in a movie I recently saw: "Sometimes destruction is a good thing. It ends one cycle so a new one can begin." I better make the most out of this internship!

So last thursday, I came to the mda's office and entered entries for the Art & Wine raffle. I also followed Ginger to Red Berry, a pretty neat apparel store, to pick up the alien mannequin. There Ginger learnt of tthe owner's interesting idea of marketing for the shop. Since the Farmer's market will take place on every Thursday from now on, in order to increase the shop's foot traffic, she would have customers and/or friends to be "live" models for the shop. They would be standing still and frequently change poses. She also plans to incorporate aspects from the Farmer's market to the exhibit, such as the wine and beautifully home grown flowers. The idea may not be the most original (Ginger herself admitted to have seen it in Portland), but it's not too late for one to learn and update oneself on the different usages of media marketing. Ginger also referred her social director to Dan Fergueson from our school, who has a slideshow on Facebook 101 for teachers, students and anyone interested in the topic. I thought it was interesting and realized the competitiveness, as well as the importance of updating yourself on the best and latest techniques of e-commerce in today's market.

After a short break, we came back to the office and I was given another set of information. This time, it's a huge binder filled with paperwork on the exhibit and food vendors participating on the Turkey Rama event this coming July. It seemed so overwhelming at first with all the different columns and criteria to check off, but after awhile it feels so repetitious. It's crazy to think that everyone is fighting one another for a job that anyone can do, and not necessarily one with a college degree. (Hint: Admission office, entry-level).

Anyways, by 1:00, Ginger was frantically preparing herself for the Farmer's market. mda's stall was a simple but pretty one (we're also next to a local musician playing a gorgeous electric guitar). It's nice to see merchandise t-shirts with local artists' work imprinted on them. The keyword? Think win-win.

I'll be coming back next week for more office work (and hopefully more time spent at the Farmer's market!).


Huong.