Child Life Specialist Career

Once I finish school and get my degree and certification, I plan on being a Child Life Specialist. I have always wanted to work in a hospital setting but not actually doing medical work. Adding to that my love for working with kids, I though Child Life was a happy medium. I would love to work in Riley Children’s Hospital someday but I’m not set on Riley. I’m not saying I have to be there or my life is over or anything along those lines. I know that this career choice might take me out-of-state and I’m okay with that. One reason I chose this career path is because I’ve seen many child life specialist before. When I was around five or six years old, my cousin, Chris, got really sick with an auto-immune disease. He spent most of his youth in and out of Riley, even causing him to retake his 8th grade year of school due to being absent so much. In this time, he spent in the hospital, my mom, dad, and I went and visited him often. His child life specialist did many things for him from getting him and Xbox 360 when he was there over Christmas once to having Reggie Miller and some other members of thePacers basketball team and their coach to come visit with him and talk with him. Seeing his child life specialist do these things for him really made me interested and intrigued
One immediate thought is that I will have to deal with death, probably, many times throughout my career. This will obviously be hard for me, as I imagine it would for anyone. But, like I said before, I want to be that comforting person that the parents would need during this difficult time in their lives. Another doubt I have is that I won’t be able to get an internship/job. I am a shy person (until you get to know me) and I fear that this will get in the way of internships/jobs. I believe I will be good at what I do and hopefully that will show to future