Although my internship didn’t go exactly as I had envisioned it, I am proud to say that I have grown as a person from this experience. This internship was like nothing I have ever experienced before and I was so lucky to be a part of it. I made a plan to be an Ogallala intern before Covid-19 had even crossed my mind. While it wasn’t the same experience as people have had in past years, it was still an enriching program that I plan on coming back to next year. Although my internship was cut short by a few different obstacles, I still got the full experience. I began this adventure doing odd jobs around the hospital, just waiting for the dental clinic to open up. While this is true, I still managed to get a majority of my hours in with the dentist herself. With the dentist, I had the honors of helping with patients. This included everything from helping the patients get to the chair to holding the suction in the middle of a root canal. This was the fun part of shadowing, however, I was able to open my eyes to the less fun side of dentistry. This side includes scanning papers and attending meetings. This internship has showed me that there is more than one side of dentistry.
At the beginning of my internship, my three goals were to improve my public speaking, improve my leadership abilities, and expanding my professional network. I believe I have completed these three goals and more and this makes me feel as if I am a more well-rounded individual than when I started. I improved my public speaking mainly through my harvest ceremony. My harvest ceremony was at a coffee shop with a good-sized group of people listening to my presentation. My second completed goal is improving my leadership abilities. I did this by seeking out ways to help others around the hospital and taking initiative when someone needed help. This benefited me greatly by expanding my horizons from just doing what I am told. My third and final completed goal was expanding my professional network. I completed this by shadowing multiple different people in the hospital and gaining more insight to narrow down exactly what I want to do in the future.
