Final Week at OHSU

This week concluded my 5 week internship at OHSU! Overall, my internship was full of hard-work, stress and big challenges, but it was a great learning experience and I am very glad that I did it. I learned a lot about working in an office like how to be professional, how to work with co-workers, how to work for supervisors and I also learned some tools that can help me out in the future such as getting efficient at Microsoft Excel, researching tips and resources and different presentation tools. At times, I felt really overwhelmed and didn't want to continue the internship but I was able to keep moving and get through it and came out better for it. I am very thankful for my supervisor, Dr. Sakaguchi, who was great at teaching, motivating and coaching me along the way and I am glad that I got a chance to learn from him. He is a great teacher and I plan on keeping in touch with him in the future. I met a lot of people throughout my internship and I made a lot of connections and really feel that I was able to sharpen my networking skills that I learned in my career explorations class.
My presentation went very well and I am glad that my supervisor made me do it. Before I gave the presentation I just wanted it to be over with but once I started, everything fell right into place and I am happy and proud of my work. The division asked some very good questions and luckily I was prepared for them and able to answer them with confidence. When I started the presentation I told everyone that it could be a discussion based presentation and that anyone could ask a question or make a comment at any time. I am glad that I did this because it made the presentation a lot less formal and eased the tension in the room. I was a lot less nervous once people started talking and getting in to the details of the presentation as I felt that I was talking with them and not at them. In the end, the division decided to go forward with my presentation and they are proceeding in talks with management about funding so that they can get the ball rolling on it. This made me feel really good because I felt like I actually did something that mad a difference and helped the division. All of my work up until this point had not lead to such a big result and it was hard to see that what I was doing was making a difference. But now that the division is going to take my project and continue it, I feel as if I actually did something helpful for them while I was there.
The biggest thing I think I will take away from this experience is that I now know I don't want to go into the health care industry or hospital administration. It is unfortunate that I don't want to because I networked with a lot of good people in the industry, but now I can focus on exploring different areas that I may find an interest in. The internship has been one of the best learning experiences of my life and I am so glad that I did it. I will be keeping in touch with everyone I met along the way and maybe one day I can use one of their connections for a future internship or job!