First Week of Dietetics Grad School

I can hardly believe that it's my first week of my nutrition graduate school program!

My first day of 21st Grade!

For those of y'all who need a little recap, I graduated from Trinity College in 2008 with a bachelor of arts in sociology and absolutely no idea what I wanted to do for my career. During my senior year, I was recruited to serve as a Teach For America corps member and so I taught elementary school for three years in Brooklyn and the Bronx. I earned a master of science in teaching from Pace University while teaching full-time to fulfill my transitional B teaching license requirement. By 2011, I was working in the Teach For America offices, I moved to Georgia in 2014, parted ways with TFA during the great layoffs of 2015, spent 5 months on a culinary tour, and then worked for a not-going-to-be-named-here school managing their AmeriCorps program. The summer of 2018 rolls around and I hate my job, hate my travel schedule, hate my boyfriend, hate his travel schedule, and start pretending my life is an Instagram highlight reel because who wants to admit that they date a psychopath (like an actual one who will try to kill me a year later) and their soul feels like it's dying just a little bit more each and every day. My dogs were awesome this entire time because dogs are the best.

God intervenes. I leave the job that makes me miserable and I get myself enrolled as a post-baccalaureate (it's been two years and I still can never spell this word correctly without Google) at Georgia State University. I have to take general chemistry 1 and 2, organic chemistry, anatomy and physiology 1 and 2, all the labs for those courses, college algebra, pre-calculus, and principles of nutrition before I can even apply to this graduate school program. I take them, I do very well, and end up being pretty dang good at chemistry and precalculus. I move in with the unfortunate boyfriend and then thankfully realize the error of my ways and leave him, which you can read about in its very own post. And then, on a magical day this past June (June 10th, may or may not be on my calendar to be remembered forever), I was accepted to the coordinated program at GSU for the Fall 2020 semester.

And now we're caught up to present day.

I AM SO EXCITED.

The coordinated program combines a didactic program in dietetics (DPD), a master of science in nutrition, and the 1200 HOUR dietetic internship, which will allow me to sit for the registered dietitian exam. Once I am done with this program and exam in August 2022, I will be a registered dietitian with a master's degree in nutrition.

This semester, I am enrolled in macronutrients, lifecycle nutrition, research methods for health professionals, and restaurant analytics. My first supervised practice rotation (the internship component) will start this October. And I have a graduate administrative assistantship with the office of sustainability. I get to work on nutrition sustainability projects and create social media content.

This week has been overwhelming but I'm just trying to lean into it. It feels really good to feel like I have a purpose again. I worked really hard completing my prerequisites but sometimes I felt a little embarrassed saying I was taking gen chem with a bunch of 19-year-olds. If you're a college student and reading this, please, for the love of all that is holy, take the science and math courses that would make you eligible to study health sciences, even if you don't think you'd ever want to be a doctor or a nurse. I had no idea that a dietitian was even a job when I poo poo'd the notion of taking any STEM classes not required by my major, which by the way, were ZERO. Okay, that's an exaggeration - I took a statistics class designed for soft social science majors and a fake human biology course that had so much extra credit, it was nearly impossible not to get an A.

Today @instantloss (fantastic IG account) shared Arun Purang's words, "Either push your limits or suffocate in your comfort zone." This resonates with me because I felt suffocated by the limitations I set on my life because I was scared to leave people and jobs. I also felt suffocated when my ex tried to choke me to death so sometimes I guess I need to really physically feel my emotions. We all learn in our own ways. You're never too old to scrap what's holding you back and chase your dreams.