Hello,
My name is Katryna. I am a 4th year student of psychology at Vilnius University, Lithuania and I was an intern at Willingness Hub as a part of the International Summer Internship Programme’19.
The journey towards the internship in Willingness Team started the moment when I felt the need to increase my knowledge in the field of psychology not only in the university lectures but also by participating in internships, workshops, volunteering. As I seek to become able to help as many people as possible (even from different cultures), I wanted to get experience from another country. I thought that the best idea to use my time wisely was to deepen my knowledge by stepping out of my comfort zone and leaving my home, to start cooperating with new people from all around Europe and most importantly, to work in the field of psychology. Willingness Team seemed like the perfect option for that and it really was.
Working with professionals having backgrounds in therapeutic, medical, educational and social fields gave me a lot of inspiration for further researches and future plans. It is not a secret that it is not enough to have a lot of theoretical information and motivation to be a good psychologist. In order to become one, I got to observe skilled examples and had to try and take as big of an advantage as possible by attending meetings, workshops or just a simple chats with professionals. Therefore, I got a really broad view of this branch of science and got acquainted with the specifics of a foreign institution.
My favorite activities in the internship were team meetings on Saturday mornings and writing blogs every week. The possibility to attend the reunions of professionals working in different areas taught me to understand the importance of seeing the case of a patient from a lot of various perspectives. In addition, it made me realize that every opinion and point of view is remarkably important. That encouraged me to become bolder when expressing my thoughts. The task of writing blogs looked frightening at first but writing the first two made me appreciate this opportunity to research a topic that I am interested in. In that way, I became at least a little more competent in talking about these areas instead of expressing only my opinion and not having research-based information.
It was also lovely to make some new acquaintances. As a result of meeting new people from Malta and the other interns from different countries in Europe, I got to know their cultures. Besides, Malta is a small but very beautiful country in the middle of the Mediterranean Sea and I had the opportunity to explore it. It was a really good experience to live there for several months.
In summary, I could tell that as the first internship that I have ever had in the field of psychology, the Willingness International Internship was perfect. The opportunity to be a part of this team for two months gave me a lot of new strength and motivation for learning and working.
Katryna Spangelyte is an intern at Willingness Hub as part of the Willingness International Summer Internship Programme 2019. She is a 4th year student of general psychology at Vilnius University, Lithuania.