Finding Clinical Counseling Summer Internships As An Undergraduate: A Testimonial By Kevin Carpenter, Grinnell Class of 2025

“Hello! My name is Kevin Carpenter, and I am a 4^th-year psychology major and neuroscience concentrator. After I graduate, I will likely be going to grad school to become a Licensed Mental Health Counselor. Eventually, I want to have my own independent practice working with young adult male populations around issues like mental health stigma, addiction, and loneliness. As a result, I wanted to get experience working in the counseling field. 

Unfortunately, as therapy often involves working with vulnerable populations, it can be difficult to get counseling experience without already being an LMHC or having an equivalent licensure, never mind still being an undergrad student! However, I was lucky to be able to participate in two counseling internships during the summers of my second and third years at Grinnell College. So, trust me when I say it is possible! 

Firstly, I interned at BH Counseling and Wellness in Chelmsford, Massachusetts, where I worked as a Peer Support Specialist. For this job, I took children between the ages of 6 and 14 into the community to practice the social skills they were working on with their therapists. For example, I often took them to the library where self-awareness is crucial and where we would work together to foster appropriate behavior in a strict environment. 

Secondly, I interned with Trauma and Family Integration in North Chelmsford, Massachusetts, where I conducted in-home therapy for families alongside a master’s level clinician. In this position, my partner and I mostly planned interventions around the children’s needs but also worked with one another and the clients to create positive change within the entire family unit. 

Luckily, the office agencies were also within a 20-minute drive of my home! Considering I was already away from home for 3/4ths of the year at Grinnell, working an internship close to home was very important to me.  

So how did I do it?  

Firstly, I drew up a general email. Having targeted emails that demonstrate a genuine interest for a specific person or organization will undoubtedly get you higher response rates, but I didn’t always have enough time to create exceptionally individualized emails, as I started my search a bit late (because of procrastination of course—make sure you plan things out accordingly for yourself with enough time to draw up more personalized emails!). From this general email, I only had to change the name of the organization and reference the type of therapy they provide before sending it out. Once I had this template, I looked at every possible institution that I could work at within the general vicinity of my home and wrote them all down in a Google Doc. This consisted of a lot of Google searches such as “mental health resources near me,” and anything that popped up that I found remotely interesting, I added to the list. Eventually, I had around 50 cold emails drawn up for each of my internship search processes. While that may seem like a lot, it included a vast array of different opportunities from the police department to individual private practice therapists. Since counseling internships are not common, I needed to get a little creative in how I pursued them. While being in an explicitly therapeutic setting is difficult, there are countless organizations and social services that need assistance and willing individuals. Especially if you are offering a service that is partially or fully funded by Grinnell through the CLS’ summer internship funding program, a lot of people will find a way to fit you into their agency who otherwise may not be responsive, so it is perfectly fine to let the people you are emailing know this in the first few lines of your email. 

Rejection is part of the process, and while I assumed private practice therapists wouldn’t be interested in having an intern, I still emailed some hoping they might know someone who would. In getting connected to my first internship, that is exactly what happened! I emailed a therapist I found online, and he forwarded it to his supervisor who happened to be opening her own private practice and was looking for some people to fill the unique role of Peer Support Specialist. After that, we set up a meeting and the rest is history. I got my second internship through an agency’s response to my cold email, and I went and interviewed there in person the next time I was home. 

While I ended up being successful in my internship search, out of the 50 emails I sent each year, only about 5 people responded at all, never mind with a yes. In addition to that, during my second year, I already knew it was difficult to find counseling internships, so I applied for a research position instead. Unfortunately, I didn’t get the position and had to scramble with lots of emails in a short period of time to eventually work something out. Similarly, I had an awesome opportunity lined up with Waltham’s Children’s Hospital in the psychiatric ward until the unit was unfortunately shut down by the administrators of the hospital. Again, I had to scramble quickly to come up with a different opportunity. When it comes to counseling internships, getting a no is much more likely than a yes. But, getting a no will lead you to somewhere else and if you keep following the thread, there is a good chance you’ll find an opportunity at the end. Try not to restrict yourself to anyone’s idea of what a counseling internship “should” be, as being a therapist is inherently a creative job and you can get creative in the way you approach it. I was open to reaching out to people and places that most people wouldn’t and as a result got a different (and positive) outcome, so there is no one right way to search for an internship. Just reach out to as many people as you can and see what happens! 

My internship in-office experiences at both agencies were similar, involving weekly group training and meetings with my supervisor. All my coworkers were awesome and very happy to accommodate me or answer any questions I had. For the most part, I was left to decide what I wanted to do in my sessions. Considering I was working with younger populations, this would usually consist of creating some sort of game every time I worked with a client. I have come up with more twists on board games and card games than you can imagine after two of these kinds of internships! I found this part of my internship very fun and constructive (although it gets quite difficult to come up with new and fun things to do after you’ve been working with the same client for 3 months) because generating engaging activities will be a large part of what I do with my practice in the future. While lots of freedom can be good, it can also be very challenging. It is important to note that some counseling internships can be very daunting. 

At least in terms of the internships I worked, I was entering the houses of families experiencing serious interpersonal issues as a 20-year-old. Although I’ve never been in any actual danger, it is somewhat physically unsettling to be spending your time in strangers’ houses by yourself with little to no clinical counseling experience. And when something seemingly doesn’t go according to plan during a session, it is very easy to feel like it’s a reflection of your inadequacies as a future therapist. There is a certain level of confidence and bravery, even if completely unfounded, needed to work these kinds of internships because it is one thing to want to be a therapist and another to be in someone’s house with an entire family looking to you for help and answers. But if you are committed to doing this kind of work, it will bring you more satisfaction and joy than anything else in the world. The process of becoming a therapist is only completed through personal experience and trial and error. While I made plenty of mistakes, these opportunities were unbelievably valuable and constructive to my skills as a therapist, and I recommend that all aspiring therapists should try to pursue these types of opportunities as undergraduate college students.”