Fall Break is almost here!

Happy Wednesday everyone,

I am so excited for this week to be over so that I can go home for fall break. I don't live very far away, only in North Scottsdale, but I cannot wait to be home for awhile. I love living with my roommates but you can only spend so much time with three other girls! I plan to spend time in the hot tub, reading a book just for fun, and maybe doing some shopping. I cannot believe how fast this semester has been going by, just yesterday I remember being a freshman. I have included an image of how I plan to spend my break for reference.

Healthcare Bias?

Happy Monday!

I am currently in a health and cultures class and found this article and thought it was somewhat relevant to my internship/major. I really like this article because it brings up the issue of racial bias in healthcare and shows the real experiences that people have had. I have personally not experienced this, mostly because I don't go to the hospital very much but I have had nurses talk about me behind my back when I experienced a negative reaction to an allergy shot. They said things like, "wow a ten year old had the same shot and didn't have that reaction" and they sighed and scoffed out in the lobby so I can only imagine how frustrating this issue is for other people too. Here's the link to the article.

I am curious, have you ever experienced racial bias or any other bias while in the hospital or a private care practice?

A little more about AzHHA

So while we get a chance to free write I would love to talk more about my internship. As part of my internship each week we get to go on field trips. I love the field trips because they give my intern group a chance to bond. For this field trip, we visited the Arizona Capital. I had never been there before so it was an awesome adventure. We spent the morning in the office learning about Medicare and Medicaid from Barb (a lobbyist) who really helped answer some Obamacare questions and tell us about the Medicare and Medicaid programs. Everyone seemed to enjoy that and I learned a lot.

At the capital we roamed around the museum and got to learn about AZ history. An older guy was our tour guide so he was able to tell us lots about the museum. After our tour Barb introduced us to Heather Carter, an AZ house representative. Heather told us about her job and then showed us into the House of Representatives chamber where they actually vote on bills. We each got to sit in a representative’s desk and had a mock voting process. People got up and addressed the Speaker formally on a “bill” regarding texting and driving. After a few people got up and argued for or against, we officially voted. The bill did not pass by one vote.

It was amazing to see the actual process these representatives go through. Its very difficult to pass a bill and this is only at the state level! I have two people to interview this week, I'm worried that my group won't meet quota. Other groups seem to be really on top of it. I hope that my group can get it together and we can get some more interviews going. Friday we will begin to organize themes regardless. We need to see what our community members have in common so we can begin to create solutions to solve their problems.

Career Services Event: LinkedIn

On September 28, 2015 I attended the LinkedIn event hosted by ASU Alumni and Career Services here at ASU. This event was really great because Rob Humphrey, who works at LinkedIn delivered a talk about how to improve your LinkedIn profile. I had a LinkedIn prior to this event but it was definitely not very developed. Rob gave us ten tips about how to make your profile stand out and there was an opportunity to take a headshot for your profile. On a side note they also provided snacks and drinks and they were delicious. They were filming this event and I'm pretty sure I'll be spotted on that video multiple times going up to get more snacks. I included below the link to the event if you want to watch it (or spot me!) and the tips that Rob provided.

Creating a profile:

1. Personal mindset=spend time
2. Professional mindset= invest time (visualize)
3. Add a professional photo (14x times more views)
4. Write an attention grabbing headline (explain what it is you do/ show your passion & value)
5. Write a compelling summary (aspirational, what are you about, attention grabbing career accomplishments, 40 words or more, keywords)
6. Detail work experience- 12x more views
7. Add examples of your work in photos presentations & videos (visually dynamic), can be under summary and/or work experience
8. Recommended for you section: Find Discover Follow, industry experts
9. Include volunteer experiences and causes you care about (6x more views)
10. Publish (status update, share your knowledge, perspective or what you care about with a status update: concrete updates about your passions etc.) Content about certain topics may get more views than others, LinkenIn channels different content and alerts specific audiences---- look at the calendar
11. Be different!

Staying informed and connected

• follow companies (based on your own personal interests to generate jobs etc)
• connect to (25) people to be useful - filter based on quality connections
• Profile->My network->find alumni-> filter results->search by job establish connections
• Pull the trigger- aka just connect with that person  

You can watch the event at this link: http://www.ustream.tv/recorded/74381269 

 

My side job..

Also for this week's free write I thought I should talk about my part time job. So a year ago I was hired to work as a Campus Representative for Kaplan Test Prep. Kaplan is located on the Tempe campus on the lower level in the MU. Last year I posted flyers around campus and tabled at different events promoting our product. If you haven't heard of Kaplan Test Prep, maybe you have heard of Kaplan University, Kaplan Test Prep is sort of like the little sister to the University. Kaplan Test Prep prepares students for all graduate exams like the GRE, LSAT, and MCAT, and few more. This year I had the opportunity to become a Student Advisor and so I get to work directly in the Kaplan Center and interact with students. I love working with students and helping them to choose a prep program thats best for them. If you are ever around the Tempe campus MU feel free to come by and say hello!

More about me..

Since this week we have the opportunity to free write I thought I would write about some of my other passions. When I was six years old my dad taught me how to play golf. Golf is sort of like my secret love as I don't get very many opportunities to play during the school year. I was on the golf team two years in high school and was co-captain my last year. I love to play during winter break and summer break, even though it gets so very hot in Arizona!

I also love to spend time reading books, relaxing on the couch to watch a romantic comedy and to spend time with my amazing roommates. I am so lucky that I have found such amazing girls to live with.

What do you do everyday?

I work at AzHHA twice a week, Tuesday and Thursday and we have the rest of the week to interview community members. Barb and Marcus (my supervisors) allowed us to pick a demographic group that we are interested in interviewing and I picked the over 50 population because I know quite a few people in this age group. I am know working with three other interns who also have attended or are attending ASU. I am glad that my group has some ASU background so we can bond. Each Tuesday is a field trip day or a guest lecture day, which usually means free lunch (yay!). Our first visit will be to tour the Arizona State Capital and meet with a member of the House of Representatives. We will also be having time to work on planning that weeks interviews starting on Tuesday. On Friday, we all regroup and analyze our group's interviews for that week.

Barb and Marcus have taught us a unique strategy for organizing our data. The process goes somewhat like this: outreach to an individual over 50 and plan a day to meet with them. After we meet up, (we can interview in groups or solo), we take notes about that persons healthcare and health experiences. We ask them questions such as, "what do you do to stay healthy?" and "tell me about your most recent healthcare experience." We like to keep the questions open ended so that we can dig deep and really learn about the person in this population. On Friday we take all these notes gathered from the interview and write each individual fact from the interview on a sticky note. Afterwards we put the sticky notes on the wall. After we get over 12 interviews we are allowed to begin grouping them into categories, such as "healthcare beliefs" and "insurance costs". We usually get a chance to work with Marcus and Barb to discuss the next weeks goals/field trips. They have given us a lot of freedom to begin working in a group and figuring out a game plan.

This is the building that I work in on the 14th floor! It is located on Central Ave and Thomas. The views are absolutely gorgeous.