Name: Kingsley

Year: Senior

Major/Minor: Biological Sciences – Neurobiology/Global Health

CFS Concentration: Field Studies in Public Health

Chicago Field Studies really helped make the internship application process smooth and painless. Having very little job search experience, they were able to give me the tools and guidance needed to find the internship of my choice. What I found most helpful was that through CFS, I was able to get connected with organizations that I may not have been able to find on my own. This really opened up my options, allowing me to choose the foundation that best fit my interests.

Within the field of public health, I wanted to explore what the area of health education was like. Throughout my undergraduate career, I had always loved education and teaching others. My goal was to be able to combine my love for teaching with my passion for health care. This internship, focused on health education , was a perfect way to end my senior year. I worked directly under the Education and Outreach Manager of the American Liver Foundation Great Lakes Division. It exposed me to a lot of different activities a health educator would do, from representing my organization at a health fair to giving a presentation of my own to the community. It confirmed my passion for the field, and I leave the internship with great confidence that health education will be a big part of my future career.

The most important thing I learned from my CFS experience was just how different public health is in application versus in theory. I normally walk out of my global health classes with grandiose ideas and plans for how to impact the field of public health. In practice, however, a lot of these plans are muddled with politics and bureaucracy. Professionals in public health must learn to work around the rules in order to achieve their plans. By doing CFS, I was able to gain this valuable insight.