My experience at The Calm Clinic

This semester I had the opportunity to work as an intern at The Calm Clinic. This internship allowed me to find what I am passionate about and pushed me to do things out of my comfort zone. Throughout my time at The Calm Clinic, I was able to branch out into different areas of the organization and give back to the community.

As a psychology major, I think that the Calm Clinic is a great internship site for anyone else who is studying psychology as well. The Calm Clinic specializes in ketamine treatments for patients with severe mental disorders. This internship allowed me to follow a patient’s journey through their ketamine treatment and it also taught me skills and techniques to use for mental disorders such as anxiety or depression.

When it comes to this internship, it is important to have good communication and organization skills. Most times I had to work with other people on projects and I realized how important communication really is when working on my first project. This internship taught me that you cannot get anywhere in life without having good communication skills. I also noticed how much organization plays a role in this internship. Google Calendar had become my best friend when it came to balancing school, clubs, and this internship. I learned in the beginning that if you are not organized you will feel overwhelmed. Since I had a leadership position in my internship I really had to step up and reorganize everything in my life.

Although I am grateful for this experience, this would not be a career path I would pursue in the future only because I have my heart set on working with children. This does not mean that I would not recommend this type of field for anyone though. Since this area of work is still considered new, anyone who is interested in research or going out to educate people about this new treatment would be a great fit for this type of career. I feel that in order to be successful in this career you will need to have a lot of patience. This type of career does not need any higher education but having patience and good communication skills will get you far in this specific field.

One thing that I would tell any incoming interns is to be ready to take on different tasks. Originally I was considered a Research Assistant but in the end, I had done different tasks that were not geared toward a research assistant. So for the incoming interns, embrace the chaos that comes with this internship; you might even learn something about yourself by the end of it.