Tag Archives: internship

APAGS on the Road! California: 9/20 and 9/21

APAGS is coming to California in one week to offer a half-day workshop for students and recent psychology graduates.

In sponsorship with the Association of State and Provincial Psychology Boards and The Trust,  we will present sessions to help students and recent grads grapple topics such as:

  • Building a private practice — identifying different types of private practice, discerning what types of practice you might envision for yourself and developing a plan to start that practice.
  • Loan forgiveness — brief overviews of the National Health Service Corps Loan Repayment Program, Federal Public Service Loan Forgiveness Program and NIH Loan Repayment Program.
  • Psychological services in the digital age — applying key ethical principles to evaluate risks, benefits and appropriateness of using electronic communication and social media in professional practice.
  • Preparing for the EPPP — best practices for studying for the licensure exam.

Advance registration is $15 before Sept. 15, 2014. On-site registration is available for $20. Follow these links to register:

See you in California!

Spreading Awareness and Taking Action on the Internship Crisis

IMG_6735This spring, a group of APAGS members recorded a short video about the real struggles that doctoral students are facing as a result of the imbalance between internship applicants and positions — and how these struggles inform the field we care so deeply about. We hope that you can use this video as a tool to spread awareness of the internship crisis and catalyze solutions to ending it. Please watch it here:

When you click the link at the end of the video — http://on.apa.org/internshipcrisis — you are brought to a page with a number of awareness, advocacy, and action steps. The video shows that we have a large stake in the issue. The list of steps reveals that we have the skills and ability to do something about it!

APAGS intends for this video to be a stepping stone on the way to solving the internship crisis. Please share it amongst your friends, colleagues, and faculty. What did you think? What action will you take? Leave your comments on our blog.

Editor’s note: Todd Avellar is a doctoral student studying Counseling Psychology at the University of California, Santa Barbara, and was a Member at Large on the APAGS Committee through August 2014. Applications for APAGS subcommittee members are being accepted through 9/10/14.

How to Ace Your Internship Essays

If you are a clinical, counseling, or school psychology doc student and you’re at bat for the internship application process this fall, you naturally want to knock your AAPIC essays out of the park. Great — we’re here to help!

Set aside 25 minutes and watch this narrated friendly-professor webisode from Dr. Mitch Prinstein, co-author of the APAGS internship workbook Internships in Psychology.  Hot on the heels of our annual Internship Workshop at APA Convention, this video will walk you through the DO’s and DON’Ts for each of your four essays.

Also, be sure to see #internship on this blog for more videos, articles, and other resources.

Will you take the Internship Pledge?

APAGS is committed to ending the internship crisis, and we need your help. We ask that you sign this pledge and add your name to the chorus of supporters that want to see high quality internships for doctoral students in clinical, counseling, and school psychology. For a full list of ways that you can make a difference — whether you are a graduate student or psychologist — please go to http://on.apa.org/internshipcrisis.

I will stay informed about the internship crisis for psychology doctoral trainees.
I will help educate others about the internship crisis and potential solutions.
I will advocate for high quality graduate training opportunities.
I will take steps in my power to help end the internship crisis on a local level.

[emailpetition id=”1″]

The Bonus Year: Thriving When I Didn’t Match

William Barlow ElderWhen I woke up and read the email that I didn’t match, I was filled with anxiety, self-doubt, and hopelessness. Where had I gone wrong? What more could I have done?  I prepared for Phase II and submitted more applications. But with so many students vying for so few placements I was not surprised when I didn’t match again.

What seemed to start out as a failure, turned out to be—honestly—what I came to see as a “bonus year.” I sat down in March and organized a year’s worth of activities. I wanted to further my professional and academic development, carefully rewrite my internship application, and have more fun. Once I accepted that I had an extra year, I found myself enjoying a higher quality of life than I had during any other year as a student. Here are some of the ways I decided to make this year work to my advantage:

  • Professional/academic development: I arranged practica at sites that provided depth and diversity to my clinical experiences, and also found opportunities to do research related to work I wanted to do on internship. However, the single most important opportunity the bonus year afforded me was completing my dissertation. I focused on doing quality work and enjoying my topic. Having a completed dissertation strengthened my internship application, but now as an intern, I have been able to focus solely on training.
  • Revamping my Match strategies: I had an entire year to completely rework my application and my site selection strategy. I revised several essays, completely rewrote others, and incorporated the feedback of as many professionals as were willing to read my materials. This yielded some very important lessons about how to represent myself, and also caused me to reevaluate my professional goals and parts of my identity. I chose a wider range of prospective sites and was less narrow in my interests than I had been the first year.
  • Fun: I decided to spend significant time in my personal life during bonus year, being with family and friends as often as possible. I gave myself room to slow down from the forced rush I had felt leading up to internship application, and really, the rush I had felt toward every developmental step of my schooling. I made time to read for fun, organize my apartment, go to the gym, see movies, sleep more, and connect meaningfully with others.

At the end of an additional year of preparation, I felt confident reapplying for internship. I knew what to expect from the process, I had many additional insights, I knew I could handle whatever happened, and I had a better sense of humor. I opened up my email the next year to find I had matched to an incredible program I was very excited about. Although I wouldn’t have anticipated I would enjoy the extra year in graduate school, my bonus year turned out to be a great one.

[Editor’s Note: If you did not match, please read our website article for more tips and strategies to cope and move forward. APAGS encourages individuals to share their own stories in the comments below or on our Facebook page. Together we can build a more supportive, braver community until the internship crisis is resolved.]