How has your experience been?

My experiences have been a bit overwhelming because I am taking this course with the last two classes of this major outside of the internship course (HLTH491) including HLTH420 and HLTH391. It has been very challenging, as I am a junior in the BCH honors program. I also have honors requirements to fulfill so it requires a good amount of time management. Another thing, especially for low-income students, is that many of the opportunities listed in the database are not paid, so please don't take this with a grain of salt when I say start as early. Another thing is to try to make as many connections as you can because, through this, you can learn about more opportunities to apply in regards to internships as well as reach out. In navigating this process and advocating for myself, my financial aid will not cover the whole summer tuition. Fortunately, I was able to reach out to different organizations, and though I still have to pay a certain amount, it is a lot less than what I had initially thought I had to pay. With that being said, build on your networking skills during your time here at UMD, both in terms of looking for paid opportunities or having and using your connections.

Building on your network skills will also help you to become more professionally prepared for life after undergraduate. In terms of professional preparedness, this course summarized what we have learned throughout our undergraduate experience in the BCH program, dating back to intro course HLTH124. Also, I'm taking Anatomy while taking these courses, so not only am I stressed out with making sure I have an internship for this summer and being able to afford it, as well as completing all the requirements for HLTH420 and HLTH391, I also have the added stress of taking a challenging science course. For future students that have to take anatomy, take it as your only science course during a semester and see if there's any possibility of taking it online or outside the university. Another recommendation is to take HLTH391 earlier in your course plan. I know that some students could take it before taking HLTH420 and HLTH490. If you're able to take it separately so that assignments don't overlap. For example, during this semester, now that we are in mid-April and up until the start of May, a lot of the final projects of all these three courses are due and it's not really spread out so if there is an opportunity to take one of these courses earlier, I would strongly recommend you do that.

This experience has been very eye-opening, and I will say that one crucial thing that I learned, even though I was aware of I didn't know how to exactly address it in interviews or in future opportunities, was the importance of DEI initiatives at companies. One of the first things that we review in the course is DEI in the workspace as well as how to advocate for ourselves. With that, we learned how to follow up and give our thanks for interviews and acceptances to opportunities, but throughout this course, we're also learning how to reject some options professionally and communicate that with these organizations. As someone from a low-income background and as a woman of color, this course has taught me that it is okay to say no to some things and set workplace boundaries, especially when there's a better opportunity for you out there. With that being said, this course has helped me embrace how to promote and advocate for myself.

Photo by Tony Tran on Unsplash