Week 1: Environment/ Initial Impressions

This summer I am interning in Chicago at Heritage Professional Associates, a private practice that provides counseling and therapy. I am majoring in psychology, but have no idea which particular career path I want to take so I decided to do this internship to help figure out my future.

I work in a big, beautiful red-brick building and have to walk up a round staircase to get to the suite of the private practice on the second floor. My desk is behind the secretaries at the front desk and is pretty spacious for being an intern desk. The therapist offices are all down a hall and each office has large couches and comfortable chairs with beautiful art work, just as I've seen on T.V.

 My desk in the office

My job title is an intake coordinator where I complete new client intakes over the phone and help assign the patients to a therapist that meets their needs. I also call insurance companies for patient health benefits and score patient psychological tests for the the therapists. I have at least five new clients call a day that need to complete intakes and have benefits checked by the end of the day. I also have a  pile of tests on my desk with at least ten tests a day that need to be scored by certain deadlines (usually by the end of the week). With all of the deadlines and only two other interns to complete the large workload, the days fly by.

The demographic of the office is pretty diverse with men and women from ages 20-60. The two other interns at the office, both of which are girls, are at least two years older than me and much more experienced in the psychology world than (making it very intimidating). The secretaries at the front desk are middle-aged women who are always happy and energetic. The therapists in the office are consist of men and women of all different ages and backgrounds. They are all very well educated and highly respected, as their clientele grows by the day. Everyone in the office is very well-dressed, with women in nice dresses, pants, and blouses, and the men wear nice button-down shirts with work pants and occasionally ties.

Although the therapists are quite intimidating with their intelligence, they are all so sweet and eager to teach. By the end of my internship one of the therapists is going to let me sit in on a session so I can better understand their job, something I am really looking forward to!  After talking to a few of them I have learned that they each had a different journey to get to where they are now. Hearing that made me feel less stressed out about my undecided career path. The therapists also have different degrees such as PH.D, Psy.D, LSW, etc. Within the first week I had already learned much more about the different possibilities with regards to my future in psychology. The job is so interesting and I really enjoy it so far.