A Day in the Life of a Gladney Intern

If I’m going to be completely honest, I didn’t even try to smile for this photograph. I was tired, dirty, probably hungry, probably in pain, and definitely heartbroken that this was my last day with these kiddos. While it’s important to insert boundaries into the relationships you make with kids you see once a year for a week in July, and to actively assess your (and their) attachment levels to one another, there’s no limit to the amount of love you can give. I’m actually having a very difficult time trying to condense Colombia into a blog post. How do you put four years of San Mauricio into about 900 words? (Spoiler Alert: you don’t). So instead of trying to talk about La Fundación San Mauricio as a whole, I’m just going to tell you a couple stories. My first story is about the very first five minutes I ever spent at San Mauricio. I was 16 years old, and still exhausted from an extremely long trip to Bogotá ( think: pilots locking themselves out of the cockpit, mech...

In the past four days I’ve probably been asked about a hundred times, “Is it what you expected?” The thing is, when you work in adoption, you don’t go into anything with expectations. When I reported for work on my first day, I knew I was going to be doing, and I quote, “adoption-related work.” So the only expectation I had on the first day of work was to be doing something related, in some way, to adoption. [ Insert 549 page Colombian adoption manual. Entirely, 100% written en Español. ] About 15 minutes into the day, before I even learn where the bathroom is, my supervisor, Beth Whitacre (the Intercountry Adoption Caseworker) sits me down with this HUGE manual of annexes, divided into two parts, and explains that the Colombians just recently changed the law and I need to update the templates. In my head I’m thinking, “Ay dios mío, tengo que traducir toda la ley de adopción de Colombia?” Thankfully my work was kept to about 30 pages, give or take. I...

I’m going to start with a cheesy story, because those are always fun! I wholeheartedly believe God chose Gladney for me, though I had NO previous experience with adoption! Being on the brink of finishing graduate school, 27 years old, living life freely with no husband or children, I obviously made a 5-year plan for myself and it was going to happen. No one would tell me any differently, and if anybody got in my way, I’d step on them, not literally, because that’s frowned upon in today’s society. My plan was to intern with Cook Children’s Medical Center as a medical social worker. I was going to be the most awesome intern ever; so awesome that they offered me a job upon graduation (in August), and I was going to be a medical social worker and be HAPPY with life. Well, that plan didn’t last long and life punched me in the face and said, NOPE! Then Gladney happened. I was devastated. And when I say devastated, I mean I called one of my good friends, who is also in the UTA SSW program, ...

The title of this post is the perfect example of the question I was most commonly asked during my time at Gladney this summer. I consider it a blessing to have been the international intern for the past eight weeks, and I can hardly believe my time at Gladney has come to an end. Since today is my last day in the office it seemed like the perfect time to write a blog about my time here! I go to college in South Dakota so the question of how I came to Gladney is a legitimate one. My connection to Gladney starts with the same person who first shared my passion for adoption with me, my Aunt Darla. I really became interested in adoption when I was in 8th grade. Honestly, I am not sure what sparked the interest, but I knew from that point on I wanted to adopt children when I was older. My Aunt Darla and her husband adopted their daughter from China my junior year of high school, and I spent the majority of that summer living with their family and helping them the best I could...

As I mentioned in my previous post, the other interns at Gladney are so wonderful! The work they have done is amazing. We have all had wonderful experiences and learned so much! As the marketing intern, I thought it would be interesting to find out what exactly led them to Gladney and how their experiences have been so far. I asked them a few questions, and this is what I learned! To the interns: You are the sweetest girls with the biggest hearts! I wish we would have been able to spend more time together, but what time I had with y’all was so special! Good luck with the rest of your time at Gladney, as you finish school, and as you move on into your careers! God bless! 1. What made you want to be an intern at Gladney? Lindsey: As a requirement for my undergraduate degree in Human Development and Family Science at Oklahoma State, we are to do an internship within our field of study for a designated amount of time! I personally have no prior experience with the adoptio...