Name: Yasmine Nahim
Class Year: 2018
Major: Psychology
Hometown: Yonkers, N.Y.

Internship Placement: Summer Science Research Program
Location: Bryn Mawr College

At my internship, I have the opportunity to work with Dr. Heejung Park in the psychology department for 10 weeks. With the datasets that she has at her disposal, thus far I have created a few research questions to investigate and statistically analyze. For my research, I am studying the ways in which multiethnic adolescents in South Korea (those who have one non-Korean parent and one ethnically Korean parent) face more challenges compared to their monoethnic Korean peers with relation to their psychological wellbeing and their family life. I was especially interested in this topic because it seems to be more common that research examines immigration challenges that focus more on immigration to “Western” cultures, but I think it is important to see if what we believe to be true about the effects of immigration in one context is similar or different in another context.

I had previously heard about the Summer Science Research program through word-of-mouth and had somewhat thought about applying this summer, but what really got me thinking about and applying to the program was when Dr. Park mentioned it to me. She thought the program would be a great fit for me and encouraged me to apply, and I greatly appreciated her reaching out to me for this opportunity. I applied for this internship with Dr. Park’s guidance so that we both could not only examine questions that I would like to explore for the summer but to also have a good foundation to extrapolate on for my senior thesis.

Having earlier exposure to the dataset and being able to get familiar with it before I begin my thesis in the fall was one of my main objectives for applying to the program as I had hoped it would help me lay a solid foundation for further research.
I have previously learned how to use the statistical program SPSS for statistical analysis in other psychology classes, but through this internship I have had the opportunity to explore more in depth and complicated analyses, which will be extremely useful for the data analysis that I will have to conduct for my thesis. I am also learning how to work more independently as opposed to having a little bit more guidance as I would in a classroom setting, which again is another important skill to have for completing my thesis.

Aside from the ways in which this program can help me academically, I also think that the skills I learn can be used outside of the classroom setting. One important thing that I have learned is independence, but I think it can also be just as important to know when to ask for help. Just recently, I was having a little difficulty trying to figure out a certain function on SPSS, and in the past I probably would have just kept trying to do it on my own which would have unnecessarily taken up too much time, but now instead I asked Dr. Park for help and managed to solve the problem in half the time had I tried to just do it myself. As much as I value independence, I also think helping one another and collaboration is important to succeed.