Can you believe it’s already December?! This week I finished up my rotation in private practice, attended a seminar on Grant Writing and Policy Initiatives, and continued working on my end-of-semester projects. It’s crunch time!
To catch up with my previous private practice experiences, check out:
DI: Week 11 – Adventuring Into Private Practice
DI: Week 12 – Private Practice and Diversity Seminar
DI: Week 13 – Private Practice and Thanksgiving
My week looked like this:
Monday:
No supervised practice today, so I took advantage and drove back to Illinois from Minnesota today. I got to avoid all the crazy holiday traffic which was awesome! Once I got back, I did a lot of work on one of my projects that’s due on Wednesday. It’s scary to have a project due so soon, but it’ll feel good I’m sure once it’s out of the way.
Tuesday:
Working on recipes at private practice again. I reviewed all of the fruit, vegetable, bread, and desserts pureed recipes. Essentially, the pureed recipes are just the regular recipe with a note to puree them in a food processor. I had to add appropriate amounts of liquid and thickener to each recipe, however, so that they have the appropriate consistency. Some of the recipes, like the root beer float, sound great pureed. Others, like fish, make me glad I’m fortunate enough to be able to eat solid foods.
Wednesday:
Last day at private practice. I finished up some of the puree recipes, and started on the ground recipes. Pureed foods are basically pudding-consistency, while ground foods still have some texture. Take a potato, for example: with puree you need whipped, mashed potatoes while with ground you can have a baked potato without skin. You still need to grind up the meat products, however, which I find a little off-putting.
My preceptor (who I actually never met) called me to discuss my experience and give me feedback. She had a lot of positive things to say about me, which was nice to hear. She also told me to contact her once my internship is over because she might have a job available. (This is why you want to work hard and be professional at EVERY rotation.)
At our night class, we learned about cancer prevention and statistics. It felt a little weird to be back in night class after the holiday break, but we eased back into it. It was nice to catch up with all the other interns as well (and freak out about all the projects due in a week). :P
Thursday:
Today was a work-from-home day on all of my end-of-semester projects. There’s a lot to do before I’m done with the semester (Dec. 12). It’s hard to sit on my computer for so long though to chunk through these projects.
My tasks for the rest of the semester:
- High School Health Class (with one other intern): Due Monday, December 4th
- We had to write up a lesson about heart disease to present to a full day of high school health classes. By the time you read this we’ll be at least most of the way through the day–I’ll let you know how it goes in my next post!
- Exam 2 (individual): Due Wednesday, December 6th
- Our second (and last) exam of the semester for my public health and community nutrition night class. Like the last one it’ll be open-book open-note, but this almost makes it harder because the questions are way more specific. :P
- Research Poster (individual): Due Friday, December 8th
- We have to come up with a research question (based on the data we collected from the high schoolers earlier this semester), perform data analysis to answer this question, and then present this information in a poster. I’m doing my poster on fiber and central adiposity (waist circumference).
- Marketing Project (with two other interns): Due Monday, December 11th
- Three of us didn’t have an actual scheduled marketing rotation this semester (they ran out of preceptors). Since we still have to meet competencies in this area, our DI director gave us a marketing project to complete instead. We’ll be developing an interprofessional event at Loyola to educate other health disciplines on nutrition’s role in healthcare. Future interns will actually be presenting this event, we’re just doing the behind-the-scenes planning.
- Portfolio (individual): Due Monday, December 11th
- This is a compilation of all the projects we’ve worked on in each of our rotations throughout the semester. It also includes the evaluations we were given by our preceptors. This is actually kind of fun to work on because I get to be like, “Look! I did things!”. :P
- Research Poster Presentation (individual): Due Monday, December 11th
- Each of us will be giving a brief (5-10 min) presentation on our research poster results.
- Nutrition Intervention Proposal Presentation (with one other intern): Due Monday, December 11th
- We had to create a nutrition intervention proposal for an assignment due at the end of November. My group partner and I created a nutrition intervention around hypertension in young, adult men. All of us will present these proposals to each other briefly and offer suggestions for improvement to each other.
Friday:
Loyola hosted a seminar for the interns of the Chicago area on grant writing and policy initiatives. What’s really nice about these seminars is that they expose you to topics you don’t necessarily learn a lot about in supervised practice or other classes. Getting to meet interns from other programs is fun too. Having these seminars on Fridays is a bit rough though because the topics aren’t always the most exciting things in the world and the weekend is within sight. Our presenters understood the importance of breaks though, which always helps.
After the seminar, most of us Loyola interns stayed on campus to work on our individual research posters (using the data we collected from high school freshmen). We need to do data analysis for these posters that we can only do using software on Loyola computers. This is a little annoying since I don’t live super close to campus, and we have to pay for parking here. It was really nice that this month’s seminar was at Loyola because then we were all able to just stay longer to get stuff done–no extra trip or extra parking fee required.
Weekend:
I spent most of the weekend working on projects and studying for our last exam on Wednesday. I’m also presenting a lesson on cardiovascular disease to a class of high schoolers on Monday, so I prepped for that. The end of the semester is in sight, there’s just a lot to do before then!
Next week, I’ll be teaching high schoolers about cardiovascular disease and putting finishing touches on projects. Until then!