pros - the building that i was placed to work in, the PTs were really nice and I actually made a connection with one of them in which I can still reach out to them for advice, etc (although she no longer works there because she moved), it made me recognize my love for PT and helped me to make my decision about actually pursuing it as a career, you have complete free time after you're released and on weekends so there's plenty of time to explore (even tho I didn't like the area), you're able to connect with other people your age hoping to pursue the same career (if they're open to connecting, i'll explain in cons). We got to see autopsy being done which was pretty cool and freaky. Some people also got to see live births (it was a raffle so everyone wasn't able to go).
cons - you aren't able to choose which section you work in so they randomly assign you to a spot; this could either be inpatient or outpatient pediatrics, geriatrics, neurological, vestibular.. you don't get to choose. this sucked because I got out patient which is super easy to get rather than inpatient and i wasn't able to get any inpatient experience before applying to school but luckily it didn't effect my acceptances. There was a lack of diversity among students; I'm black and while there were about 5 of us in total, it's nothing compared to the entire group I think it was 80 or so. Same for other ethnic groups I met a hispanic girl and there weren't too many of them either. Not enough diversity at all whereas a program like SMDEP, I did that and there were many groups represented, asian, black, hispanic, white,etc. so much so that there was not one group that dominated the other, a great melting pot. Health careers NEED diversity and while the lack of diversity from the program represents the reality of the health field right now, I feel like they weren't doing enough to promote diversity among students. Students were a pretty good group but some seemed to be stand-offish and not in a way where they didn't want to talk to you but pretty much like I'm only here for the internship and that's it without real interest in making life long connections. So we never really hung out on weekends because people lived in different places also. Whereas, I'll use SMDEP again as an example, we were forced to stay in the same dorm and on the same floor. I really enjoyed that cause we got to know the people we were spending the summer with and we all still keep in contact and I did this program 2 years ago. It just made the overall experience more fun and there was never a dull moment and we now have memories to look back on with each other! I was alone most weekends luckily I knew someone in NY that I could hang with but it was kinda depressing cause I wanted to connect with the people in the program. So depending on the people, you will or won't make life long connections. I only keep in contact with one person and we went thru the whole process of applying and sharing our acceptances with each other, etc. And the lectures are boring and they were pretty unorganized some days when we had to watch movies, etc.
I know cons seem pretty long but it's based on my specific experience. I guess I was hoping to make more personal connections rather than just going to and from work everyday (I could do that at home, ya know?) so that's where most of my disappointment comes from and I really think the lack of diversity made it harder for me to connect with people or for them to connect with me because of the cultural differences (and no one is really interested in learning about another culture when they're already surrounded by their own, it's just easier to stick with what you know when it's majority of the group). Honestly, SMDEP was great with this because it was like so many differences that no one really had the option to stay with their own. But OVERALL I still enjoyed my experience aside from it being in NY lol I just hated it. I thought I loved ny until I actually stayed there for a while.
