My Process 👍

After I graduated from high school in 2009 I applied to Rhode Island College and with the help of the disability center, I was accepted into the Bridges Program.  My experiences in Hasbro Hospital directed me to consider working with sick children in some capacity.  I explored the field of social work.  I graduated with my bachelors in Social Work in May of 2014.  During my internship at Metcalf Elementary School I worked with children in the Alternative Learning Program and I soon realized that social work was not exactly what I was looking for.  I wanted to help those in the hospital just as they had helped me; I wanted to make children in the hospital happy.  I wanted to provide an escape for them.  I had already taken some Youth Development courses at Rhode Island College so after talking to my advisors we developed a specially designed program for me.  I created an Individualized Masters Program through the Youth Development department with a concentration in Child Life.  It had been our plan to get an internship with Hasbro Children's Hospital in the Child Life department and that would be my capstone, counting towards my Child Life Certification hours.  However, I interviewed at Hasbro and did not get offered the internship... to be blunt I was beyond devastated.  How was I going to graduate?  How could this happen?  I lost faith in myself and my dreams.  I finished the semester - with not so great grades and totally fell off the grid.  After getting married my husband and I talked about me going back and finishing what I had started - his confidence in me was the little push I needed (I can't lie, it was a big push).  So in January 2020 I sent Lesley Bogad - one of my advisors at RIC an email asking to meet and talk about finishing my degree.  Easy and awesome right?  Wrong - COVID hit and screwed up everything, literally everything.  So rather than our original plan of internships and working in the field, we created a new plan.  A plan that involved the research I had already collected and interviews with Child Life members in the field to see how things have changed since the pandemic.  So here I am.