Overall Experience at UMD Health Services

Mission Statement

To provide students the opportunity to develop healthy personal lifestyles, help ensure their retention at UMD, and contribute to the overall excellence of their total educational experience. We will accomplish this mission by providing quality health care, counseling, and education that focuses on their physical, emotional, social, and intellectual well being, and to be actively involved with all health issues that affect the University and community.

Biggest Challenge For Me:
One of the biggest challenges for me throughout this internship has been learning how to cope with the changing hours each week. One week I'd only intern for 9 hours and the next I would intern close to 40 or 50 hours. This was a challenge for me because it was hard to plan my schedule for other activities that I was involved in. I could have prepared for this better by knowing ahead of time that this would happen and better schedule my days.


If I Could Change One Thing:
If i could change one thing about interning at UMD Health Services it would be to allow myself to let others help me. I have a huge tendency to want to do everything myself; because of this, there were a lot of times over the past year that I was in way over my head with interning hours and responsibilities but I didn't ever want to ask for help. I thought that with my labels as assistant advisor for the Peer Health Educators and the Student Health Advisory Committee, it was my duty to get a lot of things done, and I should have asked for help with these things.


How This Internship Impacted My Career:
This internship has allowed me to keep my continued beliefs that I am in the correct field. The part of my internship that was spent at Planned Parenthood was definitely an amazing fit for me, as sexual health is m passion. Also, having more of a leadership role in the Peer Health Educators gave me the confidence that I needed to go out and educate in a much larger manner. I know that I still want to go into sexual health education, with possibly some background in social work.