Fortune Favors the Bold
With her uplifting presence and welcoming smile, you wouldn't know it by talking to Jennifer Hoskins, but she is a faculty member at PSU who juggles many hats. She is a practicing therapist and the Honors College internship coordinator by day, and the mother of six by … well, all the other moments in between. Hoskins has blazed a trail through PSU’s Honors College that one can admire and learn from. Like so many of us, she began her academic journey not entirely sure where she was heading. She originally started taking some courses for the two-year addiction counseling certification at PCC, but her passion for social services inspired her to keep going through a bachelor’s degree and doctorate.
As a transfer honors student herself, Hoskins told me about her struggles with finding an advisor for her thesis. Since it’s a looming back-of-the-mind fear many of us try to ignore, I felt her pain. The challenge Hoskins faced was that, due to her scheduling needs as a mother, all her classes were either online (she never met her instructors) or during the evening with adjunct faculty. As I listened to Hoskins explain this, I realized how grateful I was to have attended one of Brianna’s thesis orientations. Friendly tip for any juniors: attend one of these sessions!
I sympathized with college-aged Hoskins deeply. She explained the challenges of essentially “cold calling” professors, who had no idea who she was, as she was continually turned down by prospective thesis advisors. And here enters our plot twist: unbeknownst to Hoskins, the president of the university (at the time) had notified the Honors College that he would advise one student, “to model to other faculty” the importance of advising students' Honors theses. Fortune had favored the bold, one might say. Due to Hoskins’ persistence in reaching out to the Honors director so many times, they knew just the student to assign to the university president.
Hoskins and I talked at length about the irony of how asking for help can make you feel like a failure, when in reality that was what allowed the Honors faculty to know that Hoskins needed help. An advisor had been secured. I would love to share more about her experiences in finding her own thesis amongst the president's research interests, but there is still so much to share from our interview.
There is this connection between the student who asks for help and the student who gets opportunities, which is the opposite of what we imagine is gonna happen.
Internship Hunting 101
During the third year as an Honors student, we are provided the opportunity to earn credits by taking HON 404: Internship or HON 401: Research/Independent Study, and luckily for us, Hoskins is our Honors Internship Coordinator. If this sounds like something that interests you, but you are not sure how to go about the whole thing, I gathered some wonderful guidance from Hoskins about internship hunting. Of course, she invites anyone to reach out to her directly for more help, but here are some key considerations that she shared with me.
First, Hoskins acknowledges that the whole process of looking for an internship can feel somewhat frustrating, especially if you are not finding something that is directly correlated with your major. That's okay! The primary goal in finding an internship is to consider the type of population or community that you want to work with, to get to know the community. “Just do people work; that is a helpful internship,” she emphasized.
A second point that Hoskins highlighted about doing an internship that is not directly related to your ideal career is that it makes your story, your journey, that much more interesting. The experiences you gain during that internship make your academic profile more unique. “Who knows,” Hoskins smiles and says, “maybe they inspire you to consider another area within the field you hadn’t realized you were passionate about.”
Her third illuminating tip was to try and work backwards from your future goals. You may not have that entirely set in stone yet, but you likely have a few ideas of where you are headed. Take that picture-perfect goal in your mind and work your way backwards to what kinds of connections could lead you there or help you gain more familiarity with the field/area/organization/community. You fill in the blank — get creative! Before you know it, Hoskins says, “In the blink of an eye, you're working in your career, looking back at how incredibly valuable those experiences were.”
Hoskins reiterated that Honors students can always reach out to her. She encourages everyone to read the emails from their major department and to check out the department webpages, since they often have job boards or internship listings. One internship opportunity that Hoskins recommends as a wonderful opportunity for students interested in social service is with Lines for Life or Youth Line. But again, she reiterates that students should aim to work with the communities they want to connect with, the communities they care about, in whatever aspect that is.
Demystifying Licensure Exams
About mid-interview, I asked Hoskins for some honest truth about how difficult licensure exams actually are. Exam stress, for many of us, can feel like one of those looming clouds hovering like a gatekeeper to the future. Fortunately, Hoskins had some fantastic tools to share on how to prepare and maintain your mindset.
First, the tests are not perfect. Much like the field itself, there is room for improvement and continued inclusion of different perspectives. Passing them perfectly is not the goal; getting your license is. To prepare herself, Hoskins was told about an app called Pocket Prep, where she would do about 10 practice questions a day to acclimate herself to test-taking. The second tip she mentioned was enrolling in an online test preparation class designed to teach good methods and ways to approach particular tests. As I listened, I understood her strategy in addressing the significance and weight of the exam by normalizing preparation for it within your life.
Insight from Behind the Curtain
My next questions were for my fellow psychology and social work majors considering becoming a licensed therapist. Hoskins is a licensed clinical social worker (LCSW) who works in a group practice offering sessions entirely via telehealth. Offering online sessions, for Hoskins, was based largely on being able to offer flexibility in her scheduling times as well as broadening her outreach to client populations.
Over the years, there has been an increase in therapists offering more online telehealth or hybrid sessions in their schedules, as opposed to traditional in-person ones. Hoskins pointedly states that communities are diverse, so having diversity among therapists, with different interests and schedules, allows for an array of options for what people may need or prefer.
There can be freedom in the way you build your schedule, not always in the early stages of your career, she adds, but once you are more established. Hoskins has found the balance for her and her patients' needs, working as late as 7:30 pm into the evening some days, but then taking Fridays off for a three-day weekend. When her children were younger, however, this same schedule likely would not have been the most ideal.
The Beautiful Hard Work
With headlines on compassion burnout for social workers and an ever-present need for more mental health clinicians, it likely goes without saying that work in social services has its challenges. For these reasons, I asked Hoskins to describe how she balances the light and dark sides of the field. I found her response incredibly insightful, as she explained how many individuals choosing to work in therapy are often very social people themselves.
The reality of the day-to-day work, however, can be in some ways isolating. A therapist working full time, offering twenty-five sessions in a given week, along with the additional documentation, care coordination, and administrative work to organize, spends a good portion of time behind closed doors. As incredibly rewarding as it is to work with people, at times it can be extremely isolating. This is why Hoskins says it's so important to balance your life with things that are important to you, that bring you joy and anchor your connection to a community.
For my final question, I asked what Hoskins felt was her favorite aspect about being a therapist. She told me that her favorite thing is also the most challenging: working in a field that is continually striving to grow, reflect, challenge, and critically analyze itself means there isn't any point of expertise. It doesn't exist. This fact is “deeply beautiful but also makes the work hard.”