{"id":908,"date":"2016-06-28T18:11:20","date_gmt":"2016-06-28T18:11:20","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/blog.wabash.edu\/plastics\/?p=908"},"modified":"2025-07-08T19:32:52","modified_gmt":"2025-07-08T19:32:52","slug":"armuth-19-exposed-to-a-new-field","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/blog.wabash.edu\/plastics\/2016\/06\/28\/armuth-19-exposed-to-a-new-field\/","title":{"rendered":"Armuth &#8217;19 Exposed to a New Field"},"content":{"rendered":"<figure id=\"attachment_909\" aria-describedby=\"caption-attachment-909\" style=\"width: 150px\" class=\"wp-caption alignleft\"><img decoding=\"async\" class=\"wp-image-909 size-thumbnail\" src=\"http:\/\/blog.wabash.edu\/plastics\/wp-content\/uploads\/sites\/11\/2016\/06\/FullSizeRender-150x150.jpg\" alt=\"FullSizeRender\" width=\"150\" height=\"150\" \/><figcaption id=\"caption-attachment-909\" class=\"wp-caption-text\">Armuth &#8217;19 with his externship advisor<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n<p><em>Connor Armuth &#8217;19: IRHA<\/em> &#8211; If you are\u00a0one of the people who thinks that externships aren&#8217;t valuable because of their length, you are wrong. Assumptions like that are what limit students. I know this frequently happens because I was one of those students who downplayed the significance of externships before I landed mine.<\/p>\n<p>When I came to Wabash, I had no intentions of going into the \u201chealthcare\u201d field. The reason I am using quotes is that my assumption, the first problem being the word assumption, was that if I didn&#8217;t want to be a doctor or nurse or dentist I didn&#8217;t have a place in healthcare.<\/p>\n<p>Thanks to the Indiana Rural Health Association taking me under their wing for their annual conference, I discovered an entire field of jobs that I had no idea existed. One of my good family friends works in healthcare policy and hospital management. He knew I was interested in business and wanted to expose me to the business sector of health. At first, I was skeptical, thinking that it would be a waste of my time because if I wasn&#8217;t a bio or chem major I wasn&#8217;t going to be involved with healthcare whatsoever. Little did I know, by the last day of the conference, I would have a summer internship offer for next summer.<\/p>\n<p>Thanks to Career Services, I have had a little bit of practice networking just like every other student who has been to one of their networking events. By networking, I was able to communicate properly with professionals in the healthcare sector of business, and it turned out that I left with an internship offer. At first, I was shocked because this conference is the only exposure I had ever had to this type of work, but the man who offered it to me said he wasn&#8217;t worried about my lack of experience. If you show someone that you are motivated and willing to get out of your comfort zone, that shows the attributes of a valuable employee. Anyone can learn something like policy, but not everyone can approach it with the same attitude and willingness to work.<\/p>\n<p>Getting out of my comfort zone led me to meet a group of amazing individuals who work in a field that I just so happen to find fascinating. Healthcare policy is something that liberal arts students have a place in. If it weren&#8217;t for our family friend pushing me to attend this conference, I wouldn&#8217;t know anything about the debates and board meetings on the change in healthcare policy.<\/p>\n<p>I understand how lucky I was to have this opportunity presented to me after a casual conversation about school. This doesn&#8217;t mean that if you don&#8217;t have a connection you cant explore a new field. Professionals love to help out college students who are exploring the workforce because we are the future. It is very easy to think that you aren&#8217;t worth the time of a certain alum or that trying to talk to them would be a waste of their time, but I learned something that you have to conquer that fear. Believe it or not, they want to help you.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Connor Armuth &#8217;19: IRHA &#8211; If you are\u00a0one of the people who thinks that externships aren&#8217;t valuable because of their length, you are wrong. Assumptions like that are what limit students. I [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":57,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[3],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-908","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-externship"],"w_featured_image_url":"https:\/\/blog.wabash.edu\/plastics\/wp-content\/uploads\/sites\/11\/2016\/06\/FullSizeRender-1024x768.jpg","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.wabash.edu\/plastics\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/908","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.wabash.edu\/plastics\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.wabash.edu\/plastics\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.wabash.edu\/plastics\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/57"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.wabash.edu\/plastics\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=908"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/blog.wabash.edu\/plastics\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/908\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":910,"href":"https:\/\/blog.wabash.edu\/plastics\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/908\/revisions\/910"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.wabash.edu\/plastics\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=908"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.wabash.edu\/plastics\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=908"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.wabash.edu\/plastics\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=908"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}