Week 1, Day 3
Welcome to the first week of your internship with Concussion Alliance! We are excited to work with you and to get to know you better. Thank you for joining us.
We look forward to helping you get up to speed on the world of concussions in medicine and research while getting to know your fellow interns. You’ll have multimedia curricula every day, and we’ll spend time on remote teamwork and learning more about each other through social activities and group discussions.
Our second expert guest speaker this week is Dan Fogarty Today at 1:00 pm PT | 3:00 pm CT | 4:00 pm ET; Dan is a concussion patient and advocate–and a CA community member. He’s also the author of Kill the Prince, a novel about an MMA fighter struggling with persistent symptoms from multiple concussions and hiding them from his coach and girlfriend.
We’ll have our first Discussion, Revisiting our Concussion Understanding mini-discussion from the Welcome Meeting, Today at 10:00 am PT | 12:00 pm CT | 1:00 pm ET. Take a look at our discussion questions here.
Toward the end of the week, you’ll get a chance to practice your science writing before writing your real newsletter synopsis next week. You’ll write a practice synopsis and learn about our best practices in our Newsletter Workshop on Friday at 1:00 pm PT | 3:00 pm CT | 4:00 pm ET, run by our Science & Technical Writing Mentor, Kira Kunzman.
We’ll also have group social activities this week! We’ll start with Two Truths and a Lie on Thursday at 1:00 pm PT | 3:00 pm CT | 4:00 pm ET and have our first weekly Social Hour on Friday at 10:00 am PT | 12:00 pm CT | 1:00 pm ET.
Start-of-day Procedure
I’ll outline the procedure that we’d like for you to use for starting your days with us this summer. I’ll talk more about this at the welcome meeting and include this text for each “day” page this week.
Check Slack for new messages
Check the schedule in #weekly-schedules on Slack, on the week page in this portal, or on the shared Google Calender (more on that below)
Check the ‘day page’ (like this one) for tasks & content
Check your project resource Google doc in your project folder for new resources (this will come into play starting later next week).
Check in with your PM on Slack
Check in with your project partner(s) on Slack (again, this will be relevant once you start your projects).
There are five Tasks to do today:
Thank you to Dr. Casper
Please write a note to Dr. Casper thanking him for speaking yesterday. As part of showing professionalism and respect to our speakers for taking time out of their schedules to talk to us, we try to send these thank you notes back within 2 business days of their talk. You can write your note here.
Briefly peruse discussion questions for our first group discussion today!
Check out the discussion questions here.
Reach out to someone!
Reach out to a fellow intern on Slack and set up a time to talk synchronously (zoom, phone, google meet, etc.). Try to pick someone from a different school–this is a great opportunity to make connections with folks from around the country with shared interests!
[IF YOU HAVE NOT ALREADY] Concussion Alliance emails
Create your Concussion Alliance Google account!
You should receive an email notifying you of a new Google Workspace account from CascadiaNow! – this is your Concussion Alliance email. This account is solely for your CA email; you won't be using the Google Workspace account for your work. The link expires in 24 hours, so please sign in to the email as soon as you get it. If you don't see it, check your spam folders.
Email Conor from your Concussion Alliance email as soon as you get signed in.
Slack Conor if your sign-in has expired, they can send you a password reset email.
Once you have a Concussion Alliance email, we’ll be able to give you a Grammarly Premium account!
Conor can also add you to the shared Google Calendar once you send them a confirmation email that you’ve signed in.
[Before Thursday] Newsletter Workshop sign-up
Sign up for which piece of research you want to write about for your practice newsletter synopsis on this sign-up sheet. Sign-ups are first-come, first-served; you can find the options below.
Option 1
Option 2
Curriculum for Today
We’ve provided a group of educational resources below. We’ve listed them in an order that we hope will build on your understanding of concussions as you go through them.
Unit 1: What is a concussion? (~20 min)
Read Persistent Post-Concussion Symptoms — Concussion Alliance (~10 min)
Read Autonomic Nervous System Dysfunction — Concussion Alliance (~10 min)
Unit 2: Lived experience, stigma, support (~40 min)
Read College Students: Peers after Dan Fogarty’s talk on the emotional, spiritual, and physical impact of his concussion (~15 min)
Read “Friends: 5 Ways to Support Someone with a Brain Injury” after Dan Fogarty’s talk (~15 m)
How to support friends
Read this: https://www.concussionalliance.org/blog/2021/1/5/social-support-during-youth-concussion-recovery (~5 min)
Read this: https://www.concussionalliance.org/college-students#peers (~5 min)
Unit 4: Learn to write for the Concussion Update Newsletter (~1h 15 min)
Read the Concussion Update Style Guide in preparation for writing for the Concussion Update newsletter. (~15 min)
Read three newsletters (~1h):
Written by our regular team of volunteers: https://www.concussionalliance.org/newsletter/2023/3/9/neuroprotective-properties-of-cbd-may-support-tbi-recovery
The first newsletter written by last Winter’s cohort of interns: https://www.concussionalliance.org/newsletter/2022/12/15/boswellia-serrata-extract-helps-cognition