Reflection on my internship so far

When I was doing my graduate school applications, something struck me. Throughout this entire time at my internship, I thought it was merely an internship. But when I had to reflect back on my various experiences for the essay that I had to write, I found that a lot of my thoughts went back on the orphanage and my internship there.

As someone who wants to work in the student affairs field, I will be working with students from all backgrounds and ways of life. Reading a book about the culture that they’re coming from will help, but actually experiencing their culture is something that will give me an added benefit. Even though many college students might not come from India to study in the U.S., having this experience in India and at the orphanage will help a great deal. Anywhere in the world where there is turmoil and conflict, people will always go to their families and loved ones for comfort and safety. At the orphanage, when a girl is sick or is crying, she knows that she has people around her all the time who love her and can comfort her. If a student has just started college, they might have some very difficult times ahead of them. If they’re able to find support and comfort through other students that they meet, then they will have a more enjoyable time at college. Helping students to create that sense of support and comfort is something that I plan to do in my career.

Right now, I might not know the full extent of how much this internship has changed my way of thinking or how much of a change it has made to my life. But as I begin to reflect back on this internship, I can see that it will definitely have changed me in more ways than one.

Skin whitening?!?!

This entire week at my internship, the girls have been studying for their midterm exams. Since mostly all of their exams are in Marathi (a language spoken in Maharashtra, the state where I'm living), I can't help them study at all....which proves to be a very boring week. After the boring week that I had at the orphanage, I was really looking forward to being with the older girls on Saturday. Usually, we'll take a walk around the orphanage, play games, dance around and just have fun. Much to my surprise though, the older girls were studying when I walked up to the cottage where the older girls were. I saw some girls sitting outside on the steps reading and studying material for one of the exams that they would have this next week. When I gave a nice big “good morning”, they told me to keep my voice down because the sister was inside. If the sister heard voices coming from the classroom or outside, she would assume that the girls were not studying. This left me in an awkward state of “what should I do now?”

Throughout the morning though, I was able to have a conversation here and there with some of the girls. I wasn’t able to have a long conversation because they were always afraid of getting punished by the sister if she found out they were studying, but it was still a conversation. I wanted to make use of my time while I was there and wanted to get to know the girls better.

One conversation that we had kept replaying in my mind for the rest of the afternoon and weekend though. When they asked me if I liked Bombay, I replied, “I love it here! There are no big department stores, big grocery stores or lines at the grocery store. Everyone buys their fruits and vegetables every day or few days rather than buying a huge cart full of food every week. I love this lifestyle that Mumbai has.” When I told them this though, they didn’t understand why I didn’t like the big stores. They wanted the big stores, big malls, etc. Even after trying to explain why I liked Mumbai’s lifestyle rather than the American one, it still got us no where. I would love to live in a world without Walmart and JCPenney, but at the same time, they crave that world.

The theme for this day and possibly the theme for my whole time in Mumbai is, we all want what we can’t have. When I watch the news every night, almost every section of commercials has an ad for a skin whitening cream.

That's right, not a skin tanning cream but a skin whitening cream. At first I thought they meant a whitening cream for their teeth or something, but nope! Many Indians do not like their skin tone and instead want a lighter skin tone. Back in the U.S. though, you will constantly see shelves and shelves of self-tanner in the store, tanning shops set up all over town, and girls around town constantly trying to change their white skin tone to a darker one.

This brings me back to the conversation that I had with the girls at Sneangelie. Since they had a lifestyle where people go to the market once a day instead of once a week, they wanted a lifestyle that would give them time to go to the market once a week instead of once a day. They didn’t like having specialty shops that only carried meats and cheeses, or vendors carts that only sold fruit. They wanted a life full of big department stores and grocery stores where they could get their milk, meat and cookies all in one place. I guess the saying is true then, the grass is greener on the other side. Who would've thought that I learned this lesson from a bunch of 13 year olds though?!

My own evaluation about my internship

It's been a few days since I've had the time to truly think about the experiences I've had in India so far, particularly at my internship. This semester, I'm doing an internship at St. Catherine's Home, which is an orphanage for girls. It's about an hour away from where I'm staying so during the commute to and from the orphanage, I'm able to think about all that's happened so far. And now, I'm finally able to write it all down on paper.....so bear with me and this long post :)

Every day when I walk into my internship, St. Catherine’s orphanage, I can’t help myself to think like a social worker and to ask questions about the orphanage. I thought that it would be great to work in an orphanage and see the adoption process first hand. But since there are no adults around or a supervisor around, being able to ask these questions proves difficult. It’s so frustrating not being able to ask questions about the adoption process. Here I am at an orphanage where children are being adopted left and right, yet I have not even been able to meet with the social worker there or see the process first hand. I realize some of it may have to do with confidentiality, but I should at least be able to hear about what the adoption process is. I have so many questions that I would love to ask some of the children that have already been adopted, that are waiting to be adopted and that will never be adopted. After living with all your friends for a few years, how do you feel being pulled from that environment and into a new one? What is it like not having mothers and fathers to come home to? How is it living with girls who are just like you? Do you find it easier to make friends at the orphanage because of this? I’m finding that I will have to do my own research about adoption, because these questions will never get answered.

When I went to my internship on Monday, I was faced with the same challenge as in the other days: find other ways to communicate with the girls, rather than verbal, and to help them improve on their English. As the days go on, I’m still faced with that same challenge and every time I’m faced with it, I learn something new. There wasn’t anything special about the day, but I find that just by observing them and see how they interact with each other, it can help me to interact with them as well.

Some days I feel like I’m not learning anything new because the education part of being a social worker isn’t being fulfilled, aka not learning about the adoption process and more about the agency itself. And other days, I feel like I’m learning so much and am constantly improving on my skills as a social worker. Even though I still don’t feel like I’m doing all that I would like to do in my internship, I am learning valuable skills that could help me when communicating with anyone. Every day that I think about my internship, I keep coming back to the same thought. When you’re not able to do what you would like or how you would like to do it, you’re faced with having to come up with a different alternative for how to do what you would like to do. Making this skill better will help me with any situation that I am faced with.

As someone who wants to have a career in the field of higher education and student affairs, I find this internship being a wonderful resource and experience for me. In order to do my job well in the field, I will always have to have a second plan for how I would like to accomplish my goal. My internship at the orphanage is teaching me that in life, I will not always be able to do Plan A. If I’m planning a dorm event, I might not realize until later down the line that the night I want to have my event is when there’s a big hockey game that everyone’s going to. The field of student affairs constantly will have curve balls thrown at me, where I will have to be able to think on my toes and come up with other alternative ways to come up with a solution. Having this internship experience has helped me to further develop those skills and give me more experiences so that I will become a better professional in the higher education and student affairs field.

At first I wondered how an internship at an orphanage in India help me to get into grad school and to have a career in student affairs. But since starting the internship, I’ve found that there are constantly life lessons that I am learning and skills that I’m improving on that will definitely be able to help me later down in the line.