Orientation: Week Two

Week two of orientation is over. We are now so thoroughly oriented that we all point due north. By Friday mid-morning I was utterly wiped out and emptied of most of my questions, except for the big one, “How do I fit all of these rotations, projects and assignments into nine months… AND do a good job?” Ahhh, life... it’s one long series of questions.

Back to my week. Three of us gave a lesson in doing a cooking demo for the interns who hadn’t taken Cynthia Lair’s class last year. We started by describing the elements of a demo, then we showed them what to do by demo’ing Cynthia’s French lentils with sage butter, then showed them what NOT to do (actually Misha showed them what not to do in her inimitable way) in a cooking demo/food safety nightmare skit. Then the other six each did a quick cooking demo for us – they were all so good that you would never know they hadn’t taken the cooking demo class.

We also had a lesson in maternal/child nutrition from an ND, who was such a font of knowledge that she got us excited about our WIC rotations. Later that same day an RD talked to us about WIC and the new food package, which now includes fruits and veggies, whole grains and non-dairy protein options! Hooray! The RD reminded us that the population seen by WIC staff often have higher priorities than nutrition counseling and that we could end up just helping someone figure out how to use their WIC checks, or how to pay their rent that month. No matter, we were still excited about our WIC rotations.

Note to self: Since the WIC population is considered a vulnerable population, working with WIC right out of my internship would qualify me for the loan forgiveness (here's a rather dry description of the program). In other words, if I went to work for WIC, a portion of my student loans would be written off. Hmmm, it's tempting, though the maximum they’ll forgive is $10,000 over five years. (More information on loan forgiveness programs here.)

Wednesday and Thursday were spent working on our group projects in smaller teams. My team finished up our plan for the cooking class we’ll be teaching on white-colored foods. On Friday we basically checked in, talked briefly about our group projects, went over the continued learning portfolio required by the ADA (for RDs, not interns) and then went on our merry ways (my merry way took me home for a nap).