I am currently an intern for the UNLV PSY 200 Peer Mentor Program. My internship experience benefited me a lot for my future career because I was able to have a little glimpse of how it would be in the field I want to study. It also helped me develop qualities and skills that I will need in my future career and being able to develop and practice these qualities and skills was awesome. My internship does tie in with my major study because it's psychology related, and the biggest skills needed in psychology are listening, communicating, and understanding in order to connect to others. Through this internship, I have been able to practice and strengthen these skills with my mentees, peer mentors, supervisor, and even in everyday life with the people I come across with. I want to be a forensic psychologist and I think this internship helped me so much to figure out if I do want to keep pursuing this career and it confirmed that I do. I got to speak and listen to so many people from different backgrounds and I enjoyed every single one of the conversations I had with them because they taught me so much. Knowing that I was a resource to students made me feel like this is what I’m meant to do in the future. One piece of advice that I would give for incoming interns is that I would tell them to be open-minded and to give it a chance. Leading up to the first training day, I was very nervous and anxious that I was going to do terrible because I had never done such a thing. After I got to meet my supervisor, my peer mentors, and my mentees, I felt like everything was going to be okay. Now that it is coming to an end, I feel like I have grown so much as a person and as a student. I feel confident with being a leader, communicating, and listening to others. I am so grateful that my supervisor gave me the chance to be a Peer Mentor because if I hadn’t I don’t think I would be at where I’m at now. I will forever be grateful and cherish all the friendships, the conversations and the skills I learned and will keep working on them to get better for a future opportunity.
