Week 3 – Personal Contribution

Interning at ASTHO has been somewhat challenging in the sense that sometimes my work feels like being thrown into the deep end. Many of my projects are quite complex in nature, not necessarily in terms of what it takes to do the work, but because a lot of it is very technical stuff with which I don’t have much background. Sometimes my projects feel like wading through alphabet soup; as a government-adjacent organization, there are a lot of national organizations or federal agencies/groups that we work with who all have names that are turned to acronyms in conversation. Despite this, I’ve tried my best to keep up with the work I’ve been assigned or meetings I get put into; surprisingly, I’ve realized there are other ways to contribute and share my perspective, even if I’m not the most knowledgable person in the room.

For example, I was attending a meeting last week related to a really complex topic in healthcare that experts are trying to figure out how to explain to a larger audience. At first, I wasn’t sure that I could really say much, for fear that me sharing my perspective might not be all that welcome. However, I realized that, as someone who isn’t officially in healthcare, I was the outside perspective they needed to tell them that they still hadn’t simplified their ideas down enough for “outsiders” to understand. I told them that, as a student, the resources they were trying to produce would be really helpful to me, and I asked them to consider other ways of sharing their ideas, perhaps with universities. They seemed to really appreciate that perspective, and it helped spark further conversation amongst them about how to accomplish their aims. I don’t know to what extent that I’ll continue to be involved with this work, but they told me they’d love for me to continue my involvement, which was heartening.

As of now, my personal contributions outside of sharing my perspective are more research-based, so seeing direct contributions is somewhat difficult. For example, tomorrow, I’ll have a meeting with someone tomorrow morning who’s requested I do research for them on a topic they’re having trouble finding source material on. However, in other cases, I’ve served as an editor on someone else’s work, so times like those allow me to see the direct contribution of my work a little more easily. Although these sorts of contributions are small for the moment, I’ll hopefully be able to make bigger contributions as the internship progresses and I find my footing.