Professional internship

Select 1 to 2 of the journal questions located on the LHRD 4804 Professional Development Internship Instructions and answer them. 

Running Head: INTERNSHIP 1

INTERNSHIP 2

Professional Development Internship: Cajun Fitness

Student’s Name

Professor’s Name

Course Title

Date

Professional Development Internship: Cajun Fitness

A. Description of the setting or organization

This professional development internship will be undertaken at Cajun Fitness which is a fitness and gym center operating in Rayne, Louisiana. The fitness center operates five centers in Eunice, Opelousas, Youngsville, and Broussard. The fitness centers are of a high class and provide different services including nutrition and guided exercises, personal training and group training. The choice of Cajun fitness was made following the availability of good services and learning experience to engage with people in the fitness sector in order to help them develop good living habits. Cajun fitness was created to provide a local independent fitness center that would offer the best in programming, services and products giving our members the absolute best opportunity to achieve, maintain, and enjoy healthy living. This is a major field of interest in the professional career and will thus contribute highly in the future career development. 

During the internship process, I will be working in the nutrition and the group fitness sections. These sections are interlinked as they deal with groups of people who are working on their health and fitness. I will be working across the five branches with different schedules which will be given by the instructor and supervisor. I will be reporting directly to the group fitness instructor, Ronda Hebert, who will be my immediate supervisor. I will be working for forty hours every week, for six days, Monday to Saturday. My professional responsibilities will be to offer advice to the group on nutrition. This will be done in different ways, either one on one, online guidance and group boot camps. I will also be in charge of three other interns, which will form a group of four where I will be the group leader. The institution will provide human support through the supervisor, financial support in form of a monthly stipend and also transport to the different locations as the work may require. The internship program will run from October 1st 2020 to March, 31st, 2021. I will be working closely with the on-site manager, Taylor Marks and Ronda Hebert, the Group fitness instructor and my supervisor as well as Dana Atkins who is a group fitness instructor. I will also work closely with three other interns who will be working in the same department.

B. SMART goal(s)

During this internship program, I will have two major goals to be achieved at the end of the internship period. The first goal will be to improve the nutritional value and training at Cajun fitness for group fitness by ten percent by conducting nutritional research. To measure these results and progress, I will employ direct observation of the group members and compare with the previously achieved results within the same time period. The second goal will be to lead the group of three other interns in the group fitness section to improve the preference of the club by new groups by ten percent. To measure this goal, I will employ headcount mechanism to check the increase in the number of people and groups newly joining the program.

C. Purpose

This internship program at Cajun fitness will be very important in my career development and the immediate career venture. This will be the starting point to incorporate my class study with the real working environment. This learning experience will integrate both classwork and field work, which is the initial experience. Fitness and nutrition are areas of interest as well as leadership and thus, this internship will be critical in this development. These skills obtained during this internship period will feature as the first forms of experience in my resume and LinkedIn. Upon my graduation, I will be looking forward to work with a fitness company and thus, these skills will be very relevant in such a work place.

D. Professional development goals

This profession requires interactions with people and thus, strong interaction and nutritional skills. These are major skills which I will be looking forward to attaining during this internship. Since I will be interacting directly with people in groups, I will learn the different characters of people whom I will be expected to work with in the future. The interaction skills will thus be greatly improved. I will also work during this internship to improve on the nutritional skills that I have which will also be very important during my employment and professional life in future after graduating from LSU.

E. Leadership development goals

Leadership is critical in all professions and thus, I will be looking forward on improving on several leadership areas. I am not good at communication and I will thus be looking to improve on my communication skills. In order to achieve this, I will ensure that I report daily, both verbally and in writing to my supervisor on the achieved goals of the day, the schedule as well as the challenges encountered. I will also communicate to the team members every morning, the first thing when I wake up to remind them of the day’s schedule and any changes. I am also poor at convincing others. In order to improve on this, I will be working on convincing the team members to take on a new task every week, at least once and ensure that the reasoning is good enough to convince them.