My Story Part 91 - Intern

While I was in college I had to do two internships. My first internship was with the Connecticut Women’s Education and Legal Fund (CWEALF) and I was mainly working to help pass the gender inclusive anti-discrimination law. I enjoyed being a part of the effort to pass the law and I also enjoyed working with the people at CWEALF, I made some lasting friendships. And I learned a lot.

My other internship was with True Colors, and I can say the same thing about them. They were a good crew to work with and it was interesting to work with the other interns, especially the high school and undergrad students… boy do they have a different view of the world.

For my internships I had to sign an Educational Contract where you agree to learned stuff and the agency agrees to teach you stuff. For an example, my contract said my work hours were…

DATES DAYS OF WEEK HOURS:
Monday, Tuesday, Thursday and Friday 9:00 – 3:00 (1/2 hours lunch)
Starting Date: September 13, 2010
Completion Date: April 22, 2011

And it required certain work environment and skills,

Objective: To gain knowledge about diverse populations and ability to work with a range of populations served by the agency.
Assignments and experiences:
Diana will be interning at [the agency’s name] which serves a diverse youth population with different socioeconomic, ethnicities, races, sexual orientations and gender identities or expressions. In addition, she will be working with staff from other organizations around the state. She will be leading the planning sessions for the annual conference held in March at UConn’s campus in Storrs.

Objective: To gain practice skills informed by social work values, knowledge and theory in the student’s method concentration. (Identify the method concentration and the skills to be learned).
Specific objectives: Community Organizing
Assignments and experience:
Diana will be working to organize and train the GSA’s on the legislative process and on the gender inclusive anti-discrimination bill. In addition, she will facilitate the planning meetings for the True Colors conference that will be held in the spring and she will be looking for way to increase the number of Community Organizing volunteers for the conference. She will also research LGBT scholarships and information on Intersex (Disorder of Sexual Development) to update the conference Resource Guide.

Then I was graded on how well I met my goals.

Now that I have graduated with my MSW, I can supervise interns. This semester, I have an intern that I am supervising and it is a lot harder on the this side, filling out the paperwork and attending field supervisor training (in October). The training should be boring, the title of the workshop is “Helping Students Wrestle with Ethical Dilemmas in Social Work", now that is all well and good for case work or group work, but for someone whose concentration is “Community Organizing” it falls a little flat. Oh well, it is for a good cause and it will be interesting to see how they deal with a trans-person.

One of the reasons of why I went back to college to get my Master’s was to help the trans-community. When I was told that they were going to shut the factory where I worked for 28 year, I asked friends “what is the best way to help our community” and the answer came back, get your MSW. My intern is trans and I am trans… this might be the first time that a trans-social worker is supervising a trans-intern, at least for the college that she is attending.