During this summer, I had the opportunity to be the Peer Health Educator and Student Development intern for the Dean of Students office, and more specifically Tristen Abbott. During this internship, we had one main goal to achieve, which was to create a foundation for Wabash Wellness to build upon. This was the first time that this internship has existed here at Wabash College, which means that we had to create the program from the ground up. Over the course of the summer, we created a detailed manual on how Wabash Wellness peer health educators should operate and spread awareness of the eight dimensions of wellness, reached out and set up different community service events for the upcoming school year, assisted in incoming freshmen events on campus, organized an upcoming 5K event with Leslie’s Hope, and completed many more diverse tasks. Since there were no guidelines on how the internship
worked before or how long different tasks would take, it was up to me to document everything so the future interns in my position would have a detailed guideline for their summer. This means that my work over this summer not only affects the present-day Wabash Wellness program, but also paves the way for the future of it too.
My favorite part of the internship over the summer was the in-depth research about each of the eight dimensions of wellness. While each dimension may seem very self-explanatory by themselves, it was most interesting to discover how all of the different dimensions affect each
other. If one dimension of your wellness begins to decline, then it brings down all the other dimensions with it. If my physical wellness starts to get worse, then my emotional wellness, which focuses on my stressors in my life and how to bounce back from them (resilience), will also begin to worsen. Additionally, I got to research specifically about different subtopics of each dimension of wellness, such as stress and anxiety or the effects of sleep deprivation. By learning more about these topics and informing others about them, it allows me to have more knowledge which may assist me in my interest in the sport psychology career field. Sports
psychologists focus on how to maximize the efficiency of athletes by assisting with the emotional and mental aspect of athletes. While my internship may not directly deal with athletes specifically, the information that I have learned can be applicable to that profession.
I would like to thank the Dean of Students office and all other faculty members that have allowed me to assist them over the summer with this internship. Additionally, I would like to thank Tristen Abbott, who gave me the opportunity to take part in the creation of Wabash Wellness and help build the program to thrive in the future. She has put in a tremendous amount of work behind the scenes, and I am extremely excited to see where the program will go with her behind the wheel. I highly recommend this internship to all Wabash students who are looking to make change at the college that will directly impact the students’ college experience as well as build connections in our community. It was an amazing experience, and I am grateful that I was able to be a part of it.
