Jaiden Ralston

Responsibilities

I was responsible for teaching 21 fitness classes a week for seniors in independent living, assisted living, memory care and long term care. I was put in charge of the campus gym that allowed outside members as well. I planned my own workouts for each class. I handled all paperwork for the gym memberships and all resident liability forms. I was responsible for opening the gym and the pool daily and ensuring that there were always clean towels rotating through both areas. As my tasks got really high and a lot of responsibility put into my hands they were able to hire me at the end of my internship and I will be a paid employee.

Accomplishments

My great accomplishment is being able to be trusted enough as an intern to be able to open the gym, run the gym and all fitness classes on my own. I was able to gain this respect and responsibility within 3 weeks of being an intern here.

Learning experience

The greatest lessons that I learned from this internship was being able to be patient with residents that didn't understand what was gong on. I also learned how to adjust to different group of seniors in each class and how to accommodate them within the class and build around what they are capable of while still pushing them to what I thought they could handle.

What advice would you give?

Advice to students in my major would be to really understand how to build a workout and how to adjust to different settings while doing so. Paying attention to small details while studying and really taking in the material that you are learning and the hands on experiences.