Christopher Burkett entered his internship at Project L/EARN his senior year at Rutgers College in Rutgers University as a Psychology major. Christopher, who is a native of Montgomery, Alabama, had chosen to attend Rutgers because of, “The reputation and notoriety of the psychology program”. Project L/EARN had swayed Christopher’s educational goals from a Psy.D in clinical psychology to a Ph.D.
Christopher has always had an interest in people. He enjoys listening to problems and offering advice. His first research project, which he had worked on for three semesters, was on self-perception. In addition, Christopher had also volunteered in a psychology lab where the research examined the relationship between stress and performance. Christopher’s ultimate goal is to have a clinical practice and an association with an institution that facilitates his pursuit of his research agenda.
He chose to apply for Project L/EARN because he had thought it would offer him the opportunity to explore new topics in the research field. His research project, The Relationship between Race and Attitudes towards Mental Health Help Seeking”, was geared to examine whether blacks have less positive attitudes towards mental health help seeking. As a result of the Project L/EARN experience, Christopher has gained more confidence in his researching abilities. He had the opportunity to interact with many other interns, where they had assisted one another in coping with the stress and pressure inherent in an intense research-training program. Christopher’s confidence in his intelligence and his overall abilities had only been heightened by the challenges. As a past intern, he considers this to have been one of the best experiences of his education career.
