Blog 10 - Interview 2 Reflection

Mentor (noun): An experienced person in a company, college, or school who trains and counsels new employees or students

1. Please explain how you are spending your mentorship time (Is it at a workplace or somewhere else?  Are you shadowing?  Are you able to do tasks that are meaningfully related to the topic?  If so, what?  Are there other people who are experts in the location?  Etc...)

The location of my mentorship is the office of which my mentor works in. She has her therapy/main office and I am often placed to work in her back office so I can organize different materials such as patient files and manage any incoming paperwork.Other tasks which I often complete are the contacting of behavioral health insurance panels to try to worm through the system and help my mentor be added on, other times when it is more demanding I help my mentor with law aspects of the field by filling out charts on different patients if it is needed.

What usually occurs when I do paperwork is that my mentor comes in to chat with me in between her sessions and gives me a little lesson on different aspects of psychology that way I can piece together the essential parts to my topic. This part, above the rest, is what I consider the most meaningful because I am able to get real feedback from an expert who unlike online sources can describe in detail how to handle situations such as posted before.

2.  How did you find your mentor?  How did you convince this person to help you?  

The mentor that I have is actually the mother of my friend/classmate Lauren Burney. It was through Lauren that I actually made my initial contact to her mother who was kind enough to talk to me over the phone so that I could explain my plan to her.

Out of honesty, I was really nervous when it came to coming up with ideas to helping out because many people are very closed about their practices, and tend to keep a closed mind when it comes to receiving help. However, Dr. Burney is a very warm and welcoming person who despite my shyness is able to effectively communicate with me.

3. How would you rate your comfort level with your mentor at this point in your relationship?  How does this relate to the time you've spent so far at mentorship/with this person.

The current comfort level that I have with my mentor is relatively high simply because she is a really easy going and seemingly relaxed when it has come to allowing me to peer into her career. It is because of this comfort that I have found it fairly simple to complete tasks she provides me because most of them involve important documents so there is  a level of unspoken trust which helps morale in the office and I am very excited to continuing a relationship with my mentor.

4. What went well in this interview?  Why do you think so?  What do you still need to improve?  How do you know?  How will you go about it?

What I believe went well in the interview was the involvement and openness of my mentor in responding to my questions. I had interviewed my mentor for the first interview as well which was a very extensive hour long interview which made it easier to focus on the qualifications portion of my interview.

What I do acknowledge that I need to improve is my overall enunciation because at times I would speak very fast and make myself unclear as an interviewer which hindered the understanding of my questions so that I had to repeat myself a second time in order to make myself clear which is not out of the ordinary and I tend to do often.

Interview 2 Link Here

Blog 9 - Advisory Prep 3

A common misconception is the topic of suicide is that speaking about it will cause suicidal thoughts or intent, however talking about it is the first step in preventing it from happening.

1. State whether or not you currently have a mentor, and what the status of your interview is with that person.

I currently my mentor  remains as Dr. Maureen Burney Ph.D., Director of Psychology at Chino Mental Health Associates.

My mentor and I have spoken of having our interview but have not had the chance to formally set a date, however if all goes well, I hope to have my interview done this weekend, as we have arranged a meeting for this Sunday to hopefully complete it.

2. Name the area or two you find most promising and explain your reasons.  

After several weeks of looking into different branches of psychology, I have been able to narrow down my topic to the area of suicide prevention, which is primarily due with my hopes of one day being able to save the lives of others through communication, listening and problem solving. Not only is suicide a concept that affects adolescents, but it is a topic that means different things to different social groups based upon ethnicity, nationality, race, religion, age, gender, sexuality and even social classes.

Suicide prevention seems most promising to me because not only is it a topic that I am interested in, but I have an emotional connection to this topic by helping my friends and relatives who have experienced suicidal thoughts, and it is for them that I am striving to understand why it occurs to begin with.  

3. What kinds of sources do you think will help you in the next month to gain more research depth?  Where will you go to get them?

The kinds of sources which I believe will help  me throughout the next month to gain more in depth research would have to be books from the CalPoly University Library and Articles from the University harddrive. journals from the journal of Suicide and Life-Threatening Behavior which is a compilation of reports from around the world.

4. Write down a possible EQ.  

What would be the best approach in educating the public to be able to identify suicidal intent in peers, friends, relatives or others?

Blog 8: Independent Component 1 Proposal

Growing old does not mean the end of your life, it means having a lifetime of memories to look back on whenever you feel alone.

1.  Describe in detail what you plan to do for your 30 hours.

What I intend to do for my 30 hours of my independent component is collaborate with Gennesis Romero, whose topic is elderly care, in order to create and run a blog which focuses on the mental health of the elderly and the probability of suicide based upon external and internal factor. In addition to this, we intend to connect social media outlets in order to reach a middle ages and young crowd to raise awareness on issues that affect relatives in order to provide a brief understanding of what occurs in the elder mentality as a way to help the elderly maintain a longer, happier life.

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2.  Discuss how or what you will do to meet the expectation of showing 30 hours of evidence.
As mentioned previously, Gennesis Romero and I intend to run a professional blog on WordPress that would serve as our main tool in informing the public domain with information enriched entries. For our blog entries, we intend on doing extensive research using online and physical resources as well as conducting real life interviews with professionals such as psychologists, CNAs, RNs, and other people closely affiliated with the elderly.

In addition to using this extensive research to create our blog, we also intend on creating educational resources for volunteers of senior centers/retirement homes to educate themselves upon. In addition to this, we also aim to educate different age groups by also using research to run a Twitter account to reach young adults, and give them tips on signs to watch out for in their elderly relatives (immediate, short bursts of information). On top of this, we hope to have a Pintrest account that with the use of visuals will inform middle aged adults on the mentality of the elderly, the caring for a longer life, and the risks people take as they continue to grow.  

3.  Explain how what you will be doing will help you explore your topic in more depth.

The way in which this independent component will help me explore my topic, would be by creating a deeper understanding on how suicidal intent may increase with age. By focusing primarily on one single age group instead of a broad amount, I will be able to see how suicide not only develops but affects others by doing extensive research.