Internship Reflection Essay -- Reflection Paper

It has been a while since I started at the internship and I am really glad I decided to work here. I think the experience in this area is a good preview of my career and future. I am learning some important skills and finding out some things about myself and the tough skin I will need in order to stay in the area of juvenile support. One of my responsibilities involved checking the messages from the days before on the office phone. I found that some of the potential mentors sounded older. This got me wondering about the age limits of the mentors. I knew they had to be at least 18, but was there an age cap? Could a 30-year-old join the team and be the mentor to a 12-year-old? I though about the different ways that these relationships could manifest. If the mentor was older, could they potential become a parental figure to the child? I always thought of the mentors as young adults, around college age. They would be an older sibling to the child, understanding the generation specific of the child, especially once they were teens. I though that in this way, the child would possibly open up more because they would not look at the person as an authority figure. When I though about a possible 13-year-old being matched with a 35-year-old, I thought of my teen years and figured that at that age, I would not have been so willing to share. Nevertheless, we allow any willing person, over the age of 18, that passes the checks, to become a mentor! More calls throughout the week led me to turning down grandparents whose children were in county prisons. This was heart breaking. In the past, I spoke to people who worked with juvenile delinquents and they always warned me that the job was difficult. They feelings that could be evoked, even wit... ... needed to get some fingerprinting done for their job. They had to go to an actually fingerprinting center. Seeing that I do the mobile fingerprinting, I was interested in seeing how the center handled it. They did their electronically. They computer analyzed whether the print was legible then loaded it to their file. This way was much easier than our way. It was neater because their was no ink needed. Also, if a mistake was made, the cop could just redo the print. On the other hand, I have to put down a white out strip to cover the old one and re-ink the finger. After the cop was complete finished with both hands, he clicked a button and sent the prints down to Florida to get checked. The website actively keeps the applicant informed on the progress of the print. We, however, must mail it in hoping it is legible and wait for a letter to let us know how it went.