Allen Shieh

IM - Pd. 6
English 11 AP
Due: Tue, Oct. 20, 2015
Summary Journal:
Throughout the first quarter, I have achieved many things, including different skills and
advancements in my internship, in the Intern/Mentor program (IM). By utilizing resources such
as my IM teacher and my agenda book, I have been able to learn how to effectively manage and
schedule my time to meet the demanding deadlines for both this program and my other classes in
school. I also learned to communicate and establish relationships with all my stakeholders like
my IM teacher, mentor, mentors staff, and admins.
When I first started the program, I tended to select articles from all around the internet;
my criteria for a good source being whether or not the subject was merely interesting. By
doing so, I didnt critically evaluate the usefulness and credibility of the sources. Therefore, my
annotations of each article, initially, werent all that strong. After performing badly on my
compiled annotations, however, I was able learn and attain a better grasp of the proper formatting
and content of annotations. Furthermore, I have begun to narrow my topic of interest and thus
read more scholarly articles concerning ductal adenocarcinoma, or pancreas cancer. By
contacting my mentor, I was able to receive my first extensive article on this topic to closely
examine and annotate.
Although I have been able to go on site only once through the program, I have set up a
framework for my internship that would allow me to go on site on Fridays more frequently, for
both observations in the Operating Room (OR) and for research, which I have yet to set up more
in detail, completed by my mentors team. I was able to coordinate my start-up conference
between my mentor, my teacher and myself; although I didnt successfully get my mentor that
day, I was his secretary was able to set both my teacher and me up with his Physicians Assistant.
During the start-up conference, my IM teacher mainly headed the conversation, though I did try
my best to interject relevant questions whenever I felt that they were necessary. In this way, I was
able to obtain my mentors physician assistants contact info that could help get me set up with
the research conducted and with articles to suit my topic of interest.
Because I have been informed to create and maintain as many relationships as possible,
the ultimate goal being that I know everybody in the workplace, I have established a
professional relationship with the front desk staff to let me into the surgical unit and the front
desk staff in the surgical unit to let me into the sterile area. I have also begun to work with my
mentors secretary to begin the habit of reviewing my mentors surgery schedule so that I know
specifically when some cases will take place on the days I will travel on site.
This first marking period has been quite eventful, and I plan to continue my internship
and research experiences and opportunities to the greatest extent by taking advantage of the
resources I have available to me

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