Mentorship? Speech? What a Week!

1/31/2022

I had a busy week with continuing to contact professionals for interviews, actually going on interviews and preparing for my 17-20 minute original work presentation and speech. I started the week with calling and emailing professionals since most of them ended up not replying back. I was able to schedule three more interviews for the next couple of weeks. I was excited to meet these professionals and hoped that I would find someone who would be a good match for me in terms of a mentor. Mentorship is one of the main concerns I have right now with ISM, but even if with these interviews I can not find a mentor, I will have to keep persisting. I am still grateful to talk to these professionals and expand my professional network. Furthermore, the interview I had this week was with Dr. Christine Koehler who was a child therapist and clinical director of her private practice. She also has advanced training with clinical psychology and switched to counseling which was similar to my ISM journey where I switched from clinical psychology focus to counseling and psychology. At the end of my interview, I was able to ask if she would consider being my mentor and surprisingly she agreed. I was finally able to find a mentor who I had clicked with. I am excited to start working with her. Then, my next worry was my original work speech that was Monday January 31. I needed to revise my last speech and add in the original work, other interviews, mentorship and final product to the slides. I also needed to practice which was one of the hardest parts of the whole preparation process. Thankfully, I did better with this speech. I was able to stay in the time limit, spoke louder and had a better organization of my information. The only thing I needed to work on was to project my voice even more and sound more confident. This will only come through practice and I will make sure to work on it for the future.