My internship experience as a PSY 200 Peer Mentor

My internship PSY 200 Peer Mentoring for COLA at UNLV. At first I was a bit unsure but the more time passed at my internship the more I was convinced of its benefits for my desired future career. My career goal is to be a Marriage/Couple Therapist. First, the internship taught me and helped me refine many skills such as interpersonal communication, organizational skills, and leadership skills. It also allowed me to get an idea of what it would be like to have individual meetings with people and not only actively listen to them and connect with them but also help them. Many of the skills I have learned or brushed up on are transferable skills which will definitely be useful to me in the future.

I am majoring in psychology and was a peer mentor for psychology students, that is one way the internship tied into my major. I created connections and got to know people at UNLV which was a great way to add to my network while also getting experience somewhat similar to my desired career. Other than that psychology is a pretty versatile field so there are many other ways I could tie my internship and major together.

My internship does not require any educational requirements beforehand to be successful, however it is important to be independent, resourceful, organized, communicative, flexible, and have a growth mindset. Active listening is also important.

I don’t think peer mentoring can be a full time job or career so instead of considering peer mentoring I will consider the therapist career in my reflection from this point on. I am definitely interested in this career, even more so after completing my internship. It made me extremely happy to be able to help others and see them grow. I have inspired three of my mentees to become peer mentors and have helped other mentees to learn about resources and opportunities and it always excites me to see when someone found our meetings/interactions useful. Giving back to the community in this way is what drove me to want to be a therapist in the first place.

To become a therapist you would definitely need graduate school (be it for a masters or phd) as well as training and licensing. Being a peer mentor was also a good experience in my opinion since it was somewhat similar to therapy. I already plan on going to graduate school for a masters in marriage/couple and family therapy which includes interning and will ultimately get my license to qualify to practice.

One piece of advice I have for interns, be it at my internship site or any other internship site, is to keep an open mind and always try to learn. Having a growth mindset makes a huge difference. You are capable and you can do this. Believe in yourself and in moments of doubt think back to all the times you thought you couldn’t do something and still did it! You got this :)