Hi everyone! My name is Margaux Lovely and I’m an upcoming senior at Telluride High School. This summer, I am interning under Jennie Thomas, a social worker and forensic interviewer here in Telluride and surrounding counties.
Forensic psychology explores psychology’s legal applications throughout society. Forensic psychologists might provide expert testimony in courtrooms, conduct interviews and investigations, and design and implement treatment programs, among other things. In a bigger city, one might choose to specialize in only one of these subfields, but as Jennie and I discussed, based on the lack of numbers in the surrounding areas, she takes on many of these roles.
One of Jennie’s main jobs, and the one that I will be most involved in this summer, is conducting forensic interviews with children who have been exposed to violence. This can be a very difficult job, as many children have a hard time talking about what they have witnessed. Additionally, past interviewing techniques essentially scarred the child, for their brains are not as developed as an adult brain would be, hence using the same techniques on adults and children proved to be ineffective and sometimes inaccurate. However, new scientific research has come to light regarding altered, effective interviewing techniques that adhere to the child’s maturity and emotional wellbeing, which are the practices that I will be learning about with Jennie.
At the beginning of this week, I had a Zoom call with Jennie and Sarah to discuss what my internship would look like for the summer. We discussed that I would need to undergo training and perhaps take a class online in forensic interviewing enabling me to help out Jennie as much as possible with a strong knowledge base. On that note, I began with some background reading and started a course online on the 10-step forensic interviewing process put together by a professor from the University of Southern California. The course includes videos, readings, and presentations discussing the interviewing techniques. It is very interesting, and I can tell that I am already learning tons.
Required readings for the course
Besides the time spent on my internship, I went camping with my friends, did some paddle boarding, and drank lots of coffee. I have really begun to perfect my coffee-making skills throughout these past few months, which is something that both my dad and I are very happy about.
There are no comments published yet.