Riley Macks, COL ’24, Orlando, Florida
This summer, I worked as an undergraduate counselor at Camp Baker through the Baker Center in Boston, MA. Camp Baker is a therapeutic camp for children ages 6-12 that present with mild to moderate symptoms of ADHD. At Camp Baker, children participate in traditional summer camp activities, such as swimming, sports, and art. It was my role as an undergraduate counselor to lead many of these activities while also maintaining a strong fidelity to the treatment manual. All counselors were fully trained to administer the Summer Treatment Program (STP), which was designed to help children with ADHD, Oppositional Defiant Disorder (ODD), Conduct Disorder (CD), and/or any other behavioral problems. This resulted in over 250 hours of clinical experience for me this summer. I worked on a team with two other undergraduate counselors and two graduate counselors to supervise and direct our clinical knowledge. Working on this team was amazing. I was not only able to administer this clinical, evidence-based treatment, but I was also able to receive constant supervision, and almost immediate feedback after most interactions.
Following the end of Camp Baker, I continued to volunteer at the Baker Center’s Center for Effective Therapy. During that week of volunteering, I was able to sit in on the training of recently-hired clinicians. This mainly included training for the K-SADs, a standardized, diagnostic assessment. In conjunction to participating in this training, I was also given the opportunity to shadow a clinician administer this semi-structured interview to both the parents of a child, and the child themself. As a future clinician, this process gave me insight into what future tasks will be required of me. It also gave me familiarity with a tool that is not only useful to clinical practices, but could also be important for some research interests and projects.
This experience has given me the confidence and clarity to pursue a graduate program in Clinical Psychology after graduating with my BA in Psychology. This was a unique experience that will continue to impact and inform many of my clinical practices in the future. It has also solidified my desire to work with children in a clinical setting as well. Overall, working at Camp Baker this summer was an enriching experience that will continue to inform my larger career goals following graduation
This is part of a series of posts by recipients of the 2023 Career Services Summer Funding Grant. We’ve asked funding recipients to reflect on their summer experiences and talk about the industries in which they spent their summer. You can read the entire series here
