Venture Physical Therapy
I did my internship at Venture Physical Therapy and my mentor was Ted Anderson. During my internship, we did a lot of interesting activities and projects that showed what a business needs to run. I did my internship with my friend Guy Schrufer so many of the projects we had to do required two people and it was very interesting working with one of your best friends while also trying to stay professional and doing tasks efficiently.
During my internship, I did many different things that required manpower. My first major task was putting together a workout machine. This machine was heavy and definitely required both me and Guy to put it together. We also were used as movers a lot as we routinely took stuff to their storage area and to the dump. I was definitely used for my strength while at this internship. I was also used for my youth as another one of my tasks was to find information about an Amazon seller account. This was to allow the clinic to declutter and make some extra money for their business. We were able to work with a few patients where advanced expertise was needed. One of the patients needed someone to box with and we were able to help out with that. Finally, my favorite task was sorting broken massage guns so that my mentor could send them back to get brand new ones. I particularly enjoyed this task because it changed things up from tasks we were normally doing.
Through all these tasks my main takeaway is to make sure you have good communication with the person who is in charge of the company. Communication is so important for a boss and their employees. I also learned that communication needs to be the employee’s job, not the employer’s. Communication was a very big challenge for me to overcome but it did allow me to learn how to efficiently work in a business. Another big takeaway I had was every business runs differently. I have a job and this was a very different experience and did create some challenges for me.
There were a few challenges during my internship as I have already mentioned communication was one. Another challenge that I had to face was the 60 hours that I had to put in. I didn’t realize how long that actually took and I did have to give up hanging out with friends so I can get my work done and my hours in. The other big challenge I faced was not having a schedule set in stone. My job always has a schedule in place so it was interesting to be at a place where I was more on-call rather than just coming in when I was scheduled. This was definitely a challenge for me because during the summer I have my job, paddling, and I wanted to hang out with my friends but I didn’t know all the time when I was going to have to go to my internship.
Throughout the challenges I faced, I was able to meet one of my main goals was to learn how a business works and runs. All businesses work differently and that was something I was hoping to learn while at this internship. I am happy to say accomplished this goal because this business worked very differently from the ones I’ve been around. It worked very differently from my job and the business my parents own. Like I said there was no schedule and was on-call but I also only had myself to rely on when working. I’ve worked with my parents where they can be flexible and in my job, I can request days off and I work with other people. At this job, my mentor assigned me a job and I did it there wasn’t a lot of room for flexibility and communication with other people other than him. Unfortunately, I wasn’t able to meet my other goal which was to find out how businesses market to people. I plan on majoring in business marketing when I go to college and I was supposed to meet with the marketing person for Venture Physical but this fell through. This goes back to me realizing that communication is one of the most important things in a business. By the time I reached out to my mentor about meeting with the marketing person, it was too late as their schedule was full.
Although I did not meet all my goals during my internship I did expand on my 21st-century skills a lot during my internship. It was really the first time I focused on 21st-century skills outside of the classroom and school. The main one I focused on was communication skills as I have said this one I worked on a lot. I also worked on interpersonal skills as I worked with my friend Guy and my mentor who I had just met. It was interesting making that professional relationship so quickly. I also used self-direction skills as I was not given much direction with tasks so I had to rely on my ability to get things done efficiently.
I viewed my internship as something that would give you some work experience before you graduate high school. I view that as something I accomplished as I learned how a business works through the internship. High school is a very regulated place with schedules and teachers telling you what to do and how to do it. With my internship, I was just thrown into the fire and if I didn’t do a task right I’d have to redo it not have someone show me what I did wrong and how to fix it. There is a lot less hand-holding and someone looking over your shoulder if you don’t do something right you either fix it or you get fired. This internship taught me a lot about work experience and life outside of high school. This internship was very valuable and I’m glad that I was able to experience it in my high school career.
I was not able to take pictures of when I was working with patients so I took pictures of the tasks I did.