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Personal Narrative: My Internship At Mary's Place Refuge

1175 Words5 Pages

Field Journal #2
For the time that I have spent being an intern case manager at Mary’s Place Refugee Outreach, I believe that my personal growth as a person and in knowledge is never ending. From learning to be more assertive, to learning about how to navigate the Department of Social Services, I absolutely love my internship. A day has not gone by where I have not learned something valuable, whether it be from helping a client with their problem or from learning from my co-workers. From this internship alone, I have learned a lot about myself and from the people I work with.
What Have I Learned About Myself?
Before I started at Mary’s Place, I was not fully aware of what my internship would entail other than I would be working one-on-one …show more content…

So being an undergraduate with little experience in the field, I am still learning the basic ropes of social work. Luckily, I have other interns and volunteers that have a bigger background and experience in the social work field than me. The first person that I shadowed was a volunteer caseworker that used to be a social work professor at RIT. Observing how she interacts with her clients and other professionals outside of the agency is astonishing because she is filled with so much knowledge. Yet, watching her makes me feel obligated to know how to fix every scenario possible. I shared my thoughts with her about this and she shared that her education has never ended, and that it is okay to not know how to fix every situation. She also shared that she has often come across a form that is supposed to be clear to native English speakers, but most of the time, she does not even know what that form means. In that situation, it is she told me that it is completely okay to call the place to ask for guidance. From watching her, I have learned that not knowing how to do something is perfectly normal; it is just about how you go about it is the real answer. On the other hand, I also work with my clients on their own problems; therefore, I tend collaborate with them frequently during the intervention

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