My Health and Human Performance Internship: A New Road

By Takeshia Hairston '16

I remember when I was a little girl back in elementary school, I always wanted to play teacher. When I started high school, my passion started to change because I was always into sports and that led to me to pursue a career as an athletic trainer or a physical therapist. Being that it is my last semester, I decided to do my internship with Dr. Christopher Harnish. The reason why I decided to become his intern is because he has experience with personal training and he knows what it takes to fulfill the requirements behind the degree of Exercise and Sports Studies.

In this internship, I get to help out with the data he is collecting from the women’s soccer and volleyball teams, assisting in both of the night classes that deal with labs, and practicing running VO2 max and body fat testing. By practicing both of these tests, the Health and Human Performance department will soon be offering free tests to students, faculty, and staff. I am thrilled that I have the experience being able to help with testing process. One thing that I learned from Dr. Harnish from being in his classes is that doing things hands on and doing them more than once helps out a lot. After all, practice makes perfect.

In my opinion, this is a challenging internship, but it is one that will prepare me for an actual on job in a field that I am excited about doing. This experience has made me want to have a teaching degree as a background and being able to help my students like Dr. Harnish is helping me.