One of the most important skills that I had when entering my internship was confidence. Confidence in myself with being happy and interpersonal with patients. I was also very comfortable with talking to my mentor about things I was wondering about or still had questions on. Before this internship, I had done another one-week long internship at Four Corners Laser and Esthetics in eighth grade that also developed my background knowledge of lasers and talking to patients. Even though I already had the skills of talking to patients before I started the internship, it was definitely something that improved throughout my time there. When I would observe treatments it was sometimes hard to start conversations with patients but by the last couple of days, I was extremely capable of relating to patients and holding a conversation with them. I think one of the main reasons this improved was because I built relationships with each patient during the three weeks there. Most treatments needed patients to come in every week so I got to see people more than once and build trust with each visit. One of the biggest struggles I encountered during my internship was finding things to do. My mentor was not at work on my first day so it was hard for me to keep myself busy especially because I didn’t know my way around the business yet. This challenge slowly disappeared once I got to work with my mentor and learn everything about her field of work and I was able to notice things to be done around the office and help with them.
After finally landing on Peak Rejuvenation for my internship I was done hearing the word “no”. It is really disappointing to get your hopes up when the answer you are going to get back is most likely “no” or not get a response at all. The easiest part about LINK is contacting people, you can send out hundreds of emails but the hardest part is finding and securing the place you will go. I think it is really beneficial for businesses to allow interns because it not only helps them but improves their understanding of the career they work in. It is a well-known fact that when you teach someone something, you automatically start to improve your understanding of the topic as well. When I started my internship my mentor taught me a lot about what a day in her life looks like but she also realized that there were some places and components of her job she needed to brush up on. During my internship, I got to take an online course about the specific laser we were using for hair removal, radio frequency, resurfacing, and many other purposes. The course did not only teach me how to use the device but also gave me a good background about the anatomy of skin and other important information. Another great thing about having a mentor is they might fill a job you didn’t even know you needed, I helped the head plastic surgeon with taking pictures and even got offered a job for this summer to help with marketing.
Before I started my internship I knew that I wanted to get my nursing degree in college but my experience in the OR and being with patients confirmed this even more. Even though I worked mostly with esthetics at Peak Rejuvenation, I realized that I would rather work on the medical side of things. Esthetics can get awfully repetitive very quick but with surgery and nursing, each patient has a new goal and it takes a lot of thinking to tailor treatment to exactly what they need. In order to prepare myself for college and going in the nursing direction, I will be taking rigorous classes next year to help my transcript and to also further my education in the math and science field.