It’s November! It seems so crazy that I’m already 10 weeks into my DI…it seems like just yesterday I found out I was matched! This week, I finished my rotation at WIC and then helped present a research poster. If you haven’t read about my first two weeks at WIC, check out:
DI: Week 8 – The Wonderful World of WIC
DI: Week 9 – An Abbreviated Week
All right, let’s get to it!
Here’s what my week looked like:
Monday:
Our lactation consultant has been really busy, and didn’t have time to draft a page for the “breastfeeding” portion of the website, so that’s what I got to do today. I essentially had to write up some basic information about breastfeeding and why it’s better for the mom and baby, talk about who WIC peer counselors are, and then link to a bunch of resources. I spent my afternoon looking at other WIC websites to see if they had lesson plans of their classes. For the most part, they didn’t, so that was a bit of a bust, but at least it gave me something to do!
Tuesday:
After hearing back from the IT department, my preceptor wanted me to find some quality YouTube videos related to breastfeeding and infant feeding that they could link to on the website. So I spent my day watching video after video of infant latching, hand expression of breastmilk, introduction of solid foods, etc. It probably looked a bit odd to people walking by–oh well! :P
Wednesday:
Last day at WIC–my preceptor and I had a meeting this morning to talk about how I did and what I learned. Then, I started drafting up a PowerPoint presentation on Vitamin D based on educational materials our site already uses. My preceptor wants to have a class here about Vitamin D. A lot of WIC participants are deficient and don’t really know much about it. I finished a rough draft before leaving for my night class–someone else will finish it in the next couple months.
At my night class, we learned about physical activity recommendations across the lifespan. This was a really interesting topic since I’m fascinated by the intersection between nutrition and physical activity to promote health (also why I got my CPT). We also had our second quiz–this was a bit nerve-wracking since none of us did particularly well on the first one… We each took the quiz individually, and then my professor put us in groups of 3 and had us take it again as a team. My team went along with all of my answers, so either that means I did well on the individual quiz, or I’m misleading my team and am just really persuasive, lol. :P Hopefully, it’s the former! We finished up class by talking about obesity–the overall theme is that we really need more research to figure out how to best address obesity.
Thursday:
As part of the research rotation for the DI, all of us interns worked together on a poster that showcased the results of the data we’ve collected from high school freshmen. If you have no idea what data collection I’m talking about–go check out DI Week 4 and Week 6. Today is Saint Albert’s Day at Loyola–Saint Albert is the patron saint of research. It’s a pretty big deal here, but dietetics has never contributed a poster. My DI director really wanted to change this to hopefully change people’s perceptions about what dietetics is and what we do (yes, we can make fancy research posters too). Hence our lovely poster! I didn’t have a rotation scheduled today, so I put our poster up this morning and attended all the events. Most of the research was done by medical school students, so they weren’t particularly nutrition-related; however, one medical school student’s research was on overfeeding newborns and risk of obesity later in childhood–fascinating! While more research definitely needs to be done, her research does highlight the importance of adequate (not excessive) nutrition starting day one for optimal health. In the afternoon, a couple more of the interns came to help me answer questions at our poster. We were on the third floor (most posters were on the second), so not a lot of people came by. Those who did, however, asked some good questions and seemed interested.
I don’t have supervised practice scheduled for tomorrow either, just work-from-home stuff, so I drove to Minnesota after presenting our poster! It was a long drive (about 7 hours), especially after spending 10 hours at St. Albert’s Day but it was worth it to see how excited my dog, Maggie, got when I arrived at 1am.
Friday:
In Minnesota! I slept in, which was really nice, and then Spencer came over and we went out to lunch. He left for work shortly after lunch, so I spent my afternoon working on homework while snuggling with Maggie. That night, it snowed!! Maggie absolutely loves the snow, so I took her outside to run around in the white fluff–she had a blast!
Weekend:
I was lucky to get to spend the whole weekend with my parents and Maggie. My mom and I went to a craft show on Saturday and went clothes shopping afterwards. On Sunday, my older brother, Zach, came over from Saint Paul (where he lives). He, my dad and I brewed beer together. It’s a hobby we picked up about a year ago–it’s funny because they love beer and I don’t. I like the process of making it, but I’ll definitely pass on drinking it. :P Sunday night my mom, dad, Zach and I played the board game “Ticket to Ride”–such a fun game (I won). It was really nice to get to spend some quality time with family and Maggie. I’m looking forward to spending Thanksgiving with them in a few weeks, and seeing my younger brother then too!
Next week, I’ll be starting a new rotation at a private practice–until then!
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