My Internship Experience at the Love Yourself Foundation

During my time at the Love Yourself Foundation (LYF) , I have been able to learn so much about mental health and about what path I would want to go into. Starting at LYF, I thought I wanted to be a marriage and family therapist or mental health counselors, but then things started to change. I now want to be a school counselor/advisor to help adolescents to figure out what they want to do. But this does not mean that I did not take everything I learned in this internship to my career path. 

Within this internship, I have learned so much about growth and development. We often had chats about gratitude, and ups and downs in our life, which helps me know more about myself and where I still need to work on. I have also been part of behind the scenes to help plan events. This helped me learn more about the effort and work that it takes to make events such as the Revitalize & Unwind event we had at UNLV. I have even been in charge of making flyers to help promote events and the organization as a whole. Now, I believe I am more prepared to help make events and how to plan things since in the career I want to go into and many others careers, will have us help organize, promote, and manage things. 

During my internship I had also learned more about the community and why mental health should be a priority. I had attended so many events where I learned about the impact the community can have from programs and events like the one we had.  This brings me into the field of study that I am in since I am a psychology major with a minor in sociology and family studies. Something that I kept looking at is how society and community can affect individuals, especially the children of the future and how support can help them. We all have been raised in a society where mental health is something we can start to talk about and one day we would hopefully lower the negative stigma of mental health. That is importance since it will allow everyone to express them self and be able to understand themselves. 

As for my advice for incoming interns, do not be afraid to get out of your comfort zone and make something you want to make. I never thought about myself as someone who would enjoy promoting events and advertising for things but I learned that I actually want to help in those areas since it helps attract people who want to learn more about the thing you are sharing with them. Also on making things that you want to make such as spotlight to bring more engagement in the team is something else I have been able to do. This helped me get to know more about the team and how they came to work for the LYF.  Everyone had a different path that brought them here and I got to learn more about them. 

LYF also helped me learn more about personal growth since it was the class I was taking at the same time. Everything I did with LYF relating to meditation, journaling, group talking where things I had talked about in my Couple and Family Therapy class, which in turn helped me have a deeper understanding more about what we were doing for the community and individuals and why it is important. Overall, my experience with LYF is something I will take with me in the future and I will help others to learn more about wonderful programs that can help them. 

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These photos here are pictures of the events that I help with. One of them is an ARTUOK event where I helped tables to inform people about the organization. The other photo was taken at the Hospitality & Artist Mixer, which was the start of the fundraiser for the I AM LOVE program.