Match Day Massacre...and how I landed my internship

For those of you who don't know how the whole dietetic internship matching process works...consider yourself lucky. It is so stressful. You fill out a very detailed common application on a website known as DICAS. You then select the internships that you want to apply for and after making sure that you have everything attached (resume, personal statement, course list, any other supplemental application) you submit it. But wait! You're not done yet. Then you have to go on a different website called D&D digital and rank your internships. Finally you wait and wait and wait for a month and half until match day. If you're lucky enough to get an interview during this waiting period, congratulations because you're one step closer to being ranked higher on that internship's list. The stressful part is some of these internships don't even do interviews so you never know how high they rank you. So after all of this chaos comes the dreaded match day.

If your match day is anything like mine was it will go a little something like this (hopefully it doesn't):
12:30 pm-Wake up and remember what day it is.
1:00 pm-Clean my entire room and do all my laundry and organize things that I don't care about just to keep my mind off of match day.
5:00 pm-Freak out and tell my roommates "2 hours until my doom".
5:30 pm-Get Mexican with my roommates to get my mind off of matching. Order a margarita.
6:45 pm-Log on to D&D digital to avoid online traffic jam.
6:55 pm-Text my roommate to come upstairs and wait with me.
6:59 pm-Refresh page. It tells me to wait one more minute.
7:00 pm-Refresh page. "NO MATCH". It says I was on the ranked list but others were ranked higher and placed before I was.
7:01 pm-Cry. Cry. Cry. Call my mom and tell her I didn't get matched and that I don't want to talk about it to anyone else in the family. She says she will take care of it and that I will be a great registered dietitian one day. Cry more. Text my boyfriend. Text my friends. One of my friends says she is bringing over tequila.
8:30 pm-Continue to sulk for two hours and then go to sleep.

Now, that was probably not the night you were expecting but the key word in the post title is massacre so I warned you. I honestly don't even really like tequila but my friend brought it over and sometimes when life hands you lemons you gotta trade them in for limes and take a tequila shot. Anyway... While this night seemed like one of the worst nights I've had in a very long time, I am so lucky that I didn't get matched to any of the internships I applied to. The following day I received an email from my internship advisor saying that a DI that I had been interested back in January had saved a few spots for the second round matching process. I remembered this internship and chose not to apply during the first round because I didn't think that I wanted to do all of the graduate credit right away. But since my back-up plan if I didn't get matched was to go to grad school, I took this as a sign that I should try to get matched to this program during second round.

Two days later at 1:00 am the second round internship list was sent out and I already had my email ready for this internship. I sent it at 1:01 am and went to bed. I spent all of the next morning emailing other open internships just in case this one didn't work out. By my 9:00 am break at work I received an email from the internship I wanted that they wanted to do a phone interview at 10:00 am...meaning one hour. That was when I got off work so I had no time to prepare or even drive home. So what did I do? I sat in my car in the parking lot for my phone interview. And it was wonderful. I talked to the internship director as well as the clinical director who both were incredibly nice. It felt as if I had known them forever. I wasn't nervous or uncomfortable like I had been for previous interviews. I knew I was meant to be at that internship. At the end of our 30-minute phone call they extended the offer to become a dietetic intern at Murray State University. I eagerly accepted and here I am!

So if you don't get matched on the first round, DO NOT GIVE UP. Take the night to cope (tequila: optional) and then get at it in the morning. It is not the end of the world and you will still become a fabulous RD and help millions of people one day. You never know...something greater could come along and be the best thing to ever happen to you! :)

My First Blog!

Hey there! I am a senior dietetics major at the University of Kentucky graduating in (queue dramatic music) a month. I just found out that I got matched to a dietetic internship at Murray State University so I decided to start a blog to document my life, mainly my journey from dietetic intern to registered dietitian. I'm hoping that through this, you can all get an idea of what to expect when you match to your internship (which I know you all will)! I will do a new post on how I applied and matched later on this weekend but for now I need to study.

Have a great evening, y'all :)