Done with the internship!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

(And I mean each and every one of those exclamation points!)

After 7 surprisingly short months, I am officially finished with my dietetic internship!  For those of you unfamiliar with what that means, allow me to enlighten you.  For 7 months (and usually longer), students with a degree in dietetics work full time and do loads of homework every day.  Is it paid?  Of course not!  In fact, we pay big money to do it.  The only student loan we have is for my internship. 

The internship is divided into 3 parts – clinical, foodservice, and community nutrition.  I did my 3-month clinical rotation at Utah Valley Medical Center in Provo.  I loved clinical nutrition!  I assessed and counseled patients, wrote chart notes, and recommended tube feedings and TPN (intravenous feeding).  For 2 weeks I worked in the outpatient Diabetes Center where I worked with patients with Type 1, 2, and Gestational Diabetes.  Outpatient counseling is my absolute favorite.  If I could do anything, it would be that.

For foodservice, I was at Provo School District, where I learned more about school lunch and management.  I wrote menus, managed a kitchen, helped with their Jungle Theme Day, and did a Halloween taste test in an elementary school where we allowed the kids to try a bunch of different “scary” fruits and vegetables (jicama, lychee, prickly pear, and pomegranate).  My favorite part of this rotation was the nutrition education component, where I taught a series of classes to middle and high school students on body image.  I even got to teach it in an inservice to all the school lunch workers.  So fun!

I just finished my community nutrition rotation at Utah County WIC.  I would love to work at WIC one day.  I really enjoyed working with that clientele (women, infants, and children) and loved helping families become stronger and healthier. 

My biggest concern going into the internship was how Henry would handle it.  Luckily I found the best babysitter ever.  She is a stay-at-home mom of 4 boys, the youngest is 3, so Henry fit right in at the end of her family.  She loved him almost as much as I do, and he loved her just as much in return.  From the very first day, he never cried when I dropped him off, and cried more often when he had to go home.  I couldn’t have done this without her help, and appreciate so much the way she took care of my little boy!

Why did I go through this long and stressful internship?  Well, folks, that may be the saddest part.  We go through it for the right to take a test.  The test, however, has a much better payoff – once we pass, we are dubbed Registered Dietitians (RDs) – the only nutrition credential with any backbone.  Anyone can call herself a nutritionist and you have no idea what kind of training or schooling she has had.  If you see “RD” after her name, though, you know that not only does she have a bachelor’s in dietetics, but she has also done a rigorous internship and passed a hefty test.  So excited to join those ranks!