Hello, I know it's Saturday (and no, I'm not working) but I exchanged a series of emails with another student that I thought would be good to put up here. She asked me some really good questions, maybe ones that other people might have as well.

Now it is your turn to tell me how the internship is going. What's the thing that surprised you the most? The least? And what is the one thing you wished you'd done differently during the academic/transcription part of the course that would have prepared you better for the internship?

Briget: The internship is getting better by the day. It's hard. It's hard not to get discouraged and it's really hard to click on the next report on the platform for fear of what you will hear. The SUMs were cleaned up very nicely for us. The doctors burp, talk to other people, eat, even pee while they are talking to us, which I think is very disrespectful and condescending. I'm having an issue with that!

I wish that during the SUM transcriptions I had done more research and relied less on the word key that came with the SUM keys. I hardly ever opened a book the whole time. Now I am paying for that, as it's hard for me to balance between doing enough research to find a blank, and doing TOO much research.

I think that seems to be the theme, finding a balance. It seems either my production is awesome and my quality stinks OR my quality is awesome but my production stinks. I'm working on that now. Also surprising was how easy everything is to get around in the platform. Just some simple clicks and you can get around in it. The expander issue is now worked out so you wont' have to worry about it. Hang in there, don't get discouraged.

Those SBs (Skill Builders) will be a challenge but they are the best resource I have found so far. There are a lot of cardiology reports in the internship. Don't memorize the books word-for-word, rather, use them as a reference would be my advice.