Wait I'm moving tomorrow?

I can't believe tomorrow's the day! So much has happened the past few weeks it's crazy. Here's what y'all missed:

1. My roommates and I found a place and I am moving in tomorrow. Still can't believe that. It's the cutest town home in such a cool area of Louisville. I am both nervous and excited. Will post pics later this week.
   
2. I finished my summer writing course! Yes, the one that I said would be here before I know it is actually over already. I'm actually glad that Murray State made us take this prior to starting the internship because it was the perfect refresher on how to write APA style research/term/reflection/any-type-of papers.
3. One of my best friends got married! I was in her wedding this past weekend and it was absolutely beautiful. Everything went well and it was so much fun!
   
4. I got a new car :) It was a much needed change from a 2001 Volkswagon Jetta with no air conditioning to a 2014 Ford Focus SE with the works.
   
5. I had to say good bye to all of my close friends and roommates :( it was sad and full of tears, but also full of excitement for all of our upcoming years. Some will still be in Lexington, one will be in Chicago, and one is in San Antonio. I know they will all do great things and let's be serious, I'll talk to them all the time.

So as you can see lots of things happened this summer and there's only going to be more in the upcoming weeks! I have my internship orientation in Murray next week where we will be staying there for three days learning all about this upcoming year. I'm so excited to meet the other interns and share some great experiences with them. I'm just one day closer to my dream of being an RD! 

Good bye for now xoxo

Internship Placement...Hello Louisville!

While my internship doesn't technically start until August, there were a ton of things to be done this summer. The way that Murray State's DI works is they give you a list of about 10 different locations in Kentucky and you rank them 1 through 10 on where you would prefer to do your rotations. Wanting to stay in a more city-like area over a rural town I ranked Lexington and Louisville the highest and was beyond thrilled when I got my placement in Louisville! I will be doing my clinical and food service rotations at University of Louisville Hospital and my community rotation at Kentucky One Health in the diabetes center. Each of those places requires certain things be done before I can even start so I have been very busy with that!

With all of that underway I also have to set everything up with Murray State's graduate school since I will be getting my masters during all of this too. I actually have to take a medical writing course in July before I can even start my internship. (That'll be here before I know it)

I'm living with two other interns who got placed in Louisville and I am so excited to be with people who are going through the same experience as I am. We are currently deciding on where we want to live and we've narrowed it down to two different places. Fingers crossed that we sign on one soon!

So this was just a quick update about all the time and preparation it takes before you even start a dietetic internship. I probably won't post anything for a couple weeks until I'm immersed in that writing course. 

Have a great night! xoxo

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 :)