I always pride myself on being a life-long learner and I very much value continuous education. That is why I wanted to apply for an internship at Willingness in the first place after following their work for one year. During this time, I saw how much they value their team and their education on their social media. Also, I was impressed by the variety of professionals working in the Willingness Hub.
Even though I did not get the chance to be in person for the internship and experience the niceties of Malta has to offer, all in all, it was a very informative experience. As interns, we all were included in many team meetings and case discussions where we had the chance to observe and learn more about each clinic more closely. We were divided into the three different clinics (Family, Health, and Sex Clinic) at Willingness and worked more closely with the clinic that we were assigned to. For me, this was the Sex Clinic and since, I am currently studying Clinical Psychosexology, being a part of the Sex Clinic Malta was a great pleasure.
During the internship, we were given both individual and group tasks and for that, I was a bit nervous at the beginning. Sometimes I tend to have a bit of a hard time starting with a new team, but after getting to know my teammates (the other Sex Clinic interns) and learn about their ways of operating, working with them was a great pleasure. We all had different skills and perspectives which I believe made us a strong group. I did not expect to learn this much from my peers during the internship, but thanks to my teammates and our assigned tasks, I have learned how Rayyan QCRI and Overleaf (online LaTeX editor) works which I appreciated a lot.
I cannot go without saying my favourite part of the internship was writing blog posts. Each week I have written a subject that I was very much interested in. This was a bit challenging at the beginning since I am so used to writing in academic language. I had to get out of my comfort zone to write about research in a manner that everyone would be interested to read and learn from. Right now, I feel very pleased about the blog posts that I have written and grateful for the opportunity to improve myself.
My initial goal coming to this internship was to experience a multidisciplinary team environment, but at the same time learn more about the services that Willingness provides. In the end, I can confidently say that not only have I reached this goal, but I also had the chance to learn much more about writing blog posts, conducting clinical audits, and writing systematic reviews.
Coming to the end of this internship, I cannot help myself reflecting upon what I have done and learned so far, as well as what I have become aware of about myself. This internship truly helped me to realise my potential and my background as a future professional working in this field, but at the same time helped me to create a planned way forward. Overall, this was an amazing opportunity for me to improve myself within my field of studies and learn from a diverse group of professionals.
P.S.: For every question that I had, about anything that I was working on, everyone on the Willingness Team and my fellow interns from all around Europe were very helpful and I am very thankful, but I want to give special thanks to Nicola Falzon (Partner, Sex Clinic Manager & Internship Manager) for her constant support in every step of the way.
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Seray Soyman is a Psychology graduate from Turkey. Currently, she is working as an intern at Willingness and doing her master’s on Clinical Psychosexology at Sapienza University, Rome. Seray’s research interests are sex-positive behavior, sexual habits, LGBTQIA+ studies, and reproductive health.