Utah Valley Pediatrics - Internship

Over the course of the 2014 winter semester I have been allowed the great opportunity to shadow several pediatricians of Utah Valley Pediatrics.  Nearly each Friday I would go to their local office and observe what commonly happens in the day of a pediatrician.  This was an extremely valuable experience to learn different ways pediatricians interact with their patients as well as address the needs of them.  Often the patients would come in for what is called a well-child checkup.  These routine appointments are essential to aid in the continuing development of these children.  Occasionally patients would come in with illnesses or other concerns that really needed the expertise of the pediatrician to care for them.  Because this is a practice with several pediatricians, occasionally these pediatricians would be able to quickly ask a second opinion about a diagnosis and really aid getting the best care for the patient.  The pediatricians showed great interest in their patients and care for them.  It is this aspect that I really enjoyed and want to model in a future career.  To be able to aid and assist others in making their lives better would be great.  I also saw how busy doctors are even when their patients are late.  If doctors are not seeing patients they are often reading lab reports and doing various paperwork all related to assisting their patients. I am grateful for this opportunity to shadow at Utah Valley Pediatrics.

Alpine, Utah; Alpine Fitness & Physical Therapy - Lizzy

The internship at Alpine Fitness & Physical Therapy is an amazing learning opportunity. Nowhere else will you have the same hands-on opportunities that this facility provides. You work very closely with fellow interns and real patients from day one. It is a difficult internship in that it tests you intellectually, physically, and socially. However, it is a very unique opportunity as you are provided with wonderful resources, but then get to take your learning into your own hands and shape your experience into exactly what you want it to be. You can learn how to be physical therapist, or you can learn how to be a personal trainer, or you can do both! The greatest thing I learned was that, "A good physical therapist makes a good personal trainer." It makes so much sense that the two go hand in hand and I'm glad I had this experience to open my eyes to this fact, so that I can be a more successful and more motivating physical therapist some day.

Laramie Wyoming; University of Wyoming; -Ijesh Giri

Internship can teach you 2 things: Give you hands on experience in your field of study OR make you realize some things that you don’t want to do for the rest of your life. My experience at the University of Wyoming as a Bioinformatics intern lead me to believe that protein docking wasn’t going to be my pursuit. I did a lot of protein docking studies at the Jessica Liberles Lab there using various programs available. Over the period I realized that protein docking wasn’t fun for me. I wanted to write programs, create new things rather than use already written programs to do things. So after I came back, I switched my major to Computer Science w/ Bioinformatics Emphasis and now I am learning about how to do what I wanted to do, write programs. This also opened a new window of opportunities for me. I would encourage everyone to start early looking for internships and do as many as you can. You might find a lab that is interesting to you and where you want to pursue you graduate program as well.

For more information visit: http://www.uwyo.edu/.