Healthy Changes for Interns by Ajani

Healthy Changes for Interns by Ajani - September 2023 Scholarship Essay

During my time at National Holistic Institute(NHI), Emerville, I have immersed myself in many different modalities, styles, and forms of massage, therapeutic work, and spa treatments. And while I have enjoyed many of the aspects of my learning environment, no college educates without critiques. I am proposing some changes that can be made to future students to receive a better educational setting than I have at my college.
One of the biggest issues that I came across is the issue of students needing to intern for the school, and also find an external internship(externship). While in theory, this creates a realistic job searching simulation for current students, it fails to address issues of timing. I had been lead to believe that the totality of my certificate, 800s hours, would be completed on campus. After a month of instruction I was frustrated to find that I had to cut down on hours for my part-time job to search for an externship that cannot legally pay me.
While I am not advocating that NHI removes the externship, I do find it problematic that there are 64 mandatory hours of externing that have to be done outside of school hours, are unpaid, and are not in association with the 60 hours of internal internship students must complete. An externship should still remain as an option for students who wish to pursue it to fulfill their hours. However, for students who work 20+ hours a week, there is no reasonable time slot within their schedule to attend classes(24 hours a week), work 20+ hours a week, and then make time for an externship.
Requiring students to find an unpaid externship that their grade depends on is an issue because students are not in control of who decides to hire them. Employers are not allowed to charge clients for any service that the students work, yet NHI is allowed to charge clients for internal massages given to clients. Not only is there a double standard held financially, it judges students academically in an economy that has very little room for unpaid work to maintain fiscal comfortability.
I am not asking NHI to completely remove the externship due to the aforementioned benefits. Yet, I am asking NHI to allow students an option to complete all of their inter/externship hours on campus to ease students with commute, time restraints, and time affordability. I strongly urge NHI to consider this due to the state of the economy, lack of timely public transportation in the SF Bay Area, and absence of control students have in getting hired at an externship.