Ela Gore

What is your internship, and what are your basic duties?

I interned as a Cascadia Healthcare Student Intern, at their Premier Living Center branch in Portland OR. My duties included group facilitation, creating skillbuilding group curricula, planning other group activities, providing one on one mental health support, and organizing group plans. I also helped clients de-escalate, and taught them emotional regulation when the need arose, in addition to interpersonal conflict resolution.

How does this internship align with your interests and/or major?

I’m majoring in psychology and minoring in neuroscience at L&C. The reason I joined this internship was because of the great real-life exposure that it gave me. It helped me meet many mental health professionals, clinicians, mental health aides, and others, who taught me how an entire team works collaboratively in order to support a patient community in mental health facilities. It taught me what it must be like for people with traumas and health issues to face their lives bravely, and create a non-judgmental space for healing.

My interests for the future were perfectly aligned with the work, because I have been exploring clinical facets of neuroscience and psychology, for graduate school and beyond.

What’s the best part of your internship?

The best part of the internship was meeting people and hearing their stories firsthand. This includes everyone, from the patients, to the assisting staff and the Cascadia Mental Health Office. It taught me how each person has a deep and intricate story worth honoring and learning from, no matter where they’ve come from to the present moment. The patients with the gravest traumas brought along their happiest smiles, teaching me to be resilient and face each day headon. My coworkers taught me how to best support each other while participating in heavy emotional labour, and created a space for me to process my feelings, when my nervous system went off-balance due to patient incidences.

What specific skills are you gaining?

I gained the skill of teamwork, communication, resilience, active listening, boundary creating, patience (BIG TIME), non-judgmental acceptance of others, and taking things impersonally.

I believe, to my surprise, that taking things impersonally was the sole reason me and everyone else was able to work in the stressful environment. This is also very important to center into in life, when engaging in conflict or situations of unrest and allowing others to be who they are, without losing the idea of who we are within ourselves. Not making someone else’s emotions about myself and letting them process on their own, without feeling burdened also creates space for healing. This resolves the consequent internalization like nothing else.

How do you see this internship leading to a career in your chosen field and aiding in your overall career development?

Although I’m still not sure about the exact direction I’d like to go, I understand that I’m passionate about interacting with people and learning from their experiences. Additionally, I also realized that I’m highly passionate about helping people help themselves, and motivating them to make positive changes in their own lives, through inspiration, rather than doing the work for them.

How has this internship influenced your understanding of the industry or field you’re pursuing

This internship gave me the most realistic experience of what it is like to work in the most severe conditions of mental healthcare as a field of professional practice. I was able to learn about the dangers and emotional motivations of the work, while simultaneously being protected by my supervisors and coworkers.

How has Lewis & Clark supported you in the process of finding and securing your internship?

The only reason that I was able to look for this internship was because of the L&C psychology department website, where this internship was listed. L&C and Cascadia have had a history of partnership, which has helped me and many of my peers to gain valuable experience about the professional industry, and I would highly encourage other students to tap into the Lewis & Clark network in Portland.