Hi all, I have been struggling to get the experience I exactly need for this internship. For some background, I am a social work student getting my master's degree – and I am in my specialization year. This is the year I SHOULD be getting clinical experience with clients in a group and individual setting. However, I am a month in and it is not looking good for me. My gut is also telling me that something is wrong here, and I am willing to believe it because I have worked social work jobs that are not fulfilling whatsoever with a serious lack of communication on management's end.
- I am supposed to be creating a curriculum for an aftercare program, right now I am in the observation stage of gathering the information I need to create a curriculum. But I keep getting pulled by counselors in the aftercare program to help them assist children who are having behavioral issues. I can't even get any observation done because everyone thinks I am there to help with behavioral problems. That is not what I am there for.
- I do not have a supervisor to shadow in these aftercare programs. But I do have a clinical supervisor that I meet with every week, she is helpful, but she hardly has the time to have me shadow her. She has many other priorities.
- The biggest problem here I am having is that my supervisor – not my clinical – I have two supervisors. One is a licensed clinical social worker the other, is the CEO of the program. The CEO, who is my supervisor I go to for primarily most of my work, is extremely nonresponsive and acts like she does not have time for me. She does not reply to any of my emails or messages on Teams, nor does she really allow that time for us to talk. Every time I try to grab her when I see her in person she immediately shuts me down and says “Don't have time to talk”. This has been agonizing for me because I have to communicate with her, but she is not taking me very seriously I feel. I understand she is probably very busy. But why not just send a quick email and schedule a time to talk instead? And yes, I have tried to get meetings set up with her – but again, she doesn't respond to anything I send her. How many emails am I supposed to send in order for her to reply to me?? I feel as if I have to bombard her in order to get any response whatsoever. I FEEL like it should not be this way, communication should be better than this.
- There is no clear path or direction on what exactly it is I will be doing with the children at this aftercare program. Right now I am just observing, but I have been doing this for almost over a month now and feel like I am stagnating. When am I going to be getting clinical experience doing sessions with clients? I know I am supposed to create a trauma-informed curriculum, and I was promised I would be getting client one on one experience – but that has not been happening. Nor has there been any sort of indication or announcement that this is happening. I feel like I am just an over-glorified camp counselor who does not know what my actual role is here. Even though I have introduced myself to the staff – I feel like they still don't really get what I am supposed to be doing. And the CEO, of course, promised she would talk to staff and also let them all know of what I am to be doing at this time. But has not followed through with this, surprise, surprise..
I feel helpless, depressed, and unfulfilled at this internship. I will be speaking with my clinical supervisor today and see if she can help me out in any way here, and maybe I could potentially jump to another program that can actually help get me the experience I need. I feel like I should have been more aware of how this would have played out – the CEO never even gave me a list of expectations for this internship and it seems like she is expecting me to just know what my role is here. But I really don't know what my role is and I can't help but feel guilty that I jumped at this opportunity, it sounded too good to be true and now that is sadly becoming a reality for me. I thought I would be creating a curriculum for students along with also implementing therapy services. I am hardly doing anything here, I feel. Does anyone have any advice or anything that they would recommend? I am really tired of not being taken seriously here. I am frustrated and angry that this is all occurring and the CEO clearly does not give a s***. She promised me so much more, but is just jerking me around. Thank you for listening.