Venegas Enhances Lifelong Skill While Growing Career Potential During Summer Abroad

(PITTSBURGH, Pa.) - Senior women's soccer player Alex Venegas always wanted to study aboard during college but didn't want to miss out on a season of soccer or even an off-season of training. So, when she found an internship in Spain for the summer, she jumped at the chance to enhance a skill she's had since childhood and discover more about her passion, clinical psychology.

Venegas grew up in a Spanish-speaking home in Los Angeles, California, but realized as she stepped on the grounds of Madrid, the Spanish she knew was far different from the Castilian Spanish spoken in the city she would call home for eight weeks.

"I thought I was fluent in Spanish," Venegas said. "The dialect is similar but the speed in which Spaniards speak and the slight differences in the Castilian language taught me I didn't know as much as I thought but also that I would learn a whole lot more."

Venegas was thrown right into the Madrid culture as her internship program through Boston University arranged for her to live with a family as she worked at Hospital Universitario Infantil Niño Jesús, a pediatric hospital, and studied at El Instituto Internacional. Everywhere Venegas turned, Spanish was the only spoken language.

"It took a few days for me to adjust and at first I did a lot more listening than speaking," said Venegas. "But I could understand what was being said; I just had to think through my responses before speaking."

The psychology major also learned a lot about clinical psychology/psychiatry while working in the psychiatry ward of the hospital, where she worked with kids who had eating disorders. The fast-paced environment had her first clinging to her educational background as none of her coworkers or bosses spoke English or had time to pull her aside to explain things. As the weeks progressed, however, Venegas fit right in and learned a lot about the field and how the Spanish culture differs from the United States, especially in medicine. She was even afforded the opportunity to see patients one-on-one.

"The doctors and nurses I worked with were very direct with the patients, all of whom were children," Venegas explained. "My experience in America is that our bedside manner is a little more positive and comforting. But they [Spanish nurses] also got the job done."

Venegas also shadowed an oncologist at a children's hospital in L.A. as a freshman and worked in a psych lab at UCLA researching social anxiety as a sophomore.

While in Madrid, Venegas traveled throughout Spain with new classmates and visited cousins in Ireland. One of her stops was Pamplona, where she ran with the bulls.

The soccer star also learned more about the sport by watching the game on television with her host family, as the television would be muted with a radio heard broadcasting a second game while her host father and twin brothers jumped up and down and cheered.

"It was all a little crazy and loud, but so much fun," Venegas stated.

As Venegas sets her eyes on graduation she plans to take a year to do research or another internship while applying to graduate schools in clinical psychology. Her interests mostly lie in child psychopathology and child psychotherapy, where she hopes to learn more about mental disorders in children, including both where they come from, and how to treat them.