Final Week with CrossRoads (blog 10)

For my thank you notes I have two specific thank you notes, for my advisor and then the other person I worked most closely with. I also am giving the office a thank you note as well because I met with everyone and got to know everyone, but I did not necessarily work closely with all of them. I also feel that this way I can make sure to thank people that I met and worked with while also not leaving out the people that I did not work with at all but met. I think this internship was amazing and really gave me a chance to see being a survivor’s advocate as a job career in the future. This line of work was not something I had considered before this past semester, and then I took the time to reach out to internships that dealt with this line of work. Being at this internship has allowed me to see so many different aspects that go into being a supporter for a sexual assault/abuse survivor or anyone. There are so many different pieces that the advocates do from being there for the survivor in court to making sure everything that a survivor may need is available to them. The advocate also is there to help a person with medical needs, support through a forensic interview and supporting them through to finding a therapist who understands what they are going through. Then there are also the managerial people making sure that we have all the resources needed for clients as well as making sure the advocates and therapists are informed and up to date on what their job entails from taking care of themselves to helping their clients. My supervisor showed how the outreach personnel, whose primary role is to assure people know the agency’s resources must also stay up to date on changing laws, be an advocate to change laws and attitudes, and educate students, employees, and others on consent, sexual assault, and sexual harassment.
Throughout this internship I got the chance to work on an application for a grant for the organization, creating a curriculum that aligns with legal correctness, being a part of other community groups, and seeing the behind the scenes work it takes to work with sexual assault survivors. I think I achieved more in my internship than I was expecting even though my initial of getting to create and present my curriculum did not work out (like discussed in the previous blog). While I may not have gotten to present my curriculum to students I feel confident that it will be used in the future!
My piece of advice for students next year is to reach out and get to know the people around you. Ask your colleagues why they chose this line of work and even ask them how they went about applying for the position they are in. This may sound like an odd question, but with CrossRoads going through an expansion I got the chance to ask one of the women I work with what exactly was required for applying to CrossRoads and how exactly did the process go once being hired: was their extra training once hired, etc. This sparked an interesting conversation between me and this woman and I got the chance to hear her story of why she came to CrossRoads as well as some of the other women working there. I would also like to advise next year’s students to be able to adapt to your plans because things may not turn out how you are expecting but being able to adapt may allow you to get an amazing experience from a perspective you were not expecting. I wish all the best to next year’s students and I hope their experience is as fulfilling and exciting as mine was!