Meet Maggie: Child life

I actually started as a pre-occupational therapy major because I knew I wanted to work with kids in the hospital setting. And it was during my second semester here that I realized that I kind of wanted to go into a different role. So still working with kids in the hospital but kind of the different psychosocial side of it.

I'd never heard of child life before, but after talking to one of my sister's friends who was a child life specialist, I realized that was the path I wanted to take. And so I switched from pre-occupational therapy to child and family development for the start of my sophomore year, because that's kind of the degree path that you go into when you want to become a child specialist. And then I just added the master's degree so that I could get the core classes done so I'd be ready for certification after college.

It was actually an old advisor that I had. She was the person that I talked to when I was switching my major, and I didn't know that they had the accelerated program until she mentioned it. So it kind of just fell into place. It was perfect for me that Western has the master's degree program because not a lot of schools have it, only a select few.

I just kind of applied everywhere for practicum because in the child life field, they're very competitive to get. And I was looking for a shorter practicum because that's kind of what works with my schedule because normally they could be anywhere from 8 to 16 weeks, but I wanted like a four week full time practicum.

Also, I volunteer at Bronson Children's Hospital right down the road, and the person that I volunteer under used to work at Johns Hopkins All Childrens. So I didn't know that when I was applying. But it's kind of a small world.

I was a child practicum student. so it's a step before an internship. It's not necessarily hands on, it's more observation. So I had three different rotations, one in the facility dog handler role, neonatal intensive care unit and pre-op. And so I would just follow around the specialist on the floor for that week and just observe how they interacted with patients and families. And Johns Hopkins was actually a great learning experience because they kind of let me do some of the interactions with the children and families, and they gave me more of a hands on role.

Yes. Karin Rourke is our advisor for the Child Life Club and she used to be a child specialist, so she kind of knows the ins and outs of applications. So she's been a very good resource for this whole process.

I would say biggest takeaway for me was to just kind of go into it with an open mind because there's lots of different units in the hospital. I went into it thinking that I would like one particular unit, but coming out of it, I realized that I liked a totally opposite unit.

So just going into everything with an open mind was very important for me, and that's what I'm going to take to my internship. If I get assigned a floor that I'm kind of not as comfortable in just to go with it, because that's where I learn the best. For example, during my practicum, I was in the neonatal intensive care unit and I knew nothing about it or how to work with tiny babies. But that was the greatest learning experience that I had.

Oh yeah, absolutely. The masters courses are very specific to becoming a child life specialist. So everything that we pretty much learned can be directly applied to the role that we're going to be playing. And a lot of my professors were previous child life specialists or are currently childcare specialists. So they were able to answer everyone's questions and teach us about the role. So this program has honestly been so beneficial to the career that I'm entering after school.

Being a student athlete has done so much for me as a person by teaching me all the the lifelong skills that I need. It was definitely hard at first to balance the rigors of being a collegiate student and a collegiate athlete because both are kind of increasing the level from high school and club sports and all of that. But since I'm entering my fifth year, I kind of got that balance down and I've learned how to add things to my plate as I go. So I've added volunteer roles and added being the president of the Child Life Club.

So I joined the club when I changed my major to child and family development. Last year I was the secretary, and this year I'm going to be the president of the club.

So in the past, we've kind of moved our club to online meetings. We meet once a month online.  The reason it's online is because some of the girls are doing internships in other states and some live in other states because our degree is purely online. But my goal is to make the online part of the club more interactive and add some teaching elements into the club meetings just to give the girls a better feel for the degree and the career. And that really is what helped me when I was in the club during undergrad, because I joined when I didn't know much about what the career entailed.

Also I want to bring in guest speakers that can speak on their experience in the field to not only give the girls and the club more information on the degree and the job responsibilities, but also networking opportunities. Networking is so huge in the field and if you know somebody, chances are child life specialists in other states and counties will also know that person. So it's a small world in the field and that's very important to do.

Volleyball was the main interest, but I honestly love Michigan so I knew that this would be a good home for me. And I also like the atmosphere here at Western. Everyone is so supportive of each other, and that's especially true in the athletic department. So that kind of just added to the experience that I was looking for.