Some words to describe today: hectic, stressful, busy, exciting, and tiresome.
Today was my first day of my dietetic internship! And I’m at my orientation! In Utah! It has been so crazy!
Backtracking to last night… I was really stressed about packing because there were a lot of important things I needed to remember (paperwork, assignments, writing utensils, calculators, binders, etc.). We are presenting a group assignment so I also had to get everything I needed for that. Packing my clothes felt like an ordeal because I needed clothes to wear around town, business/professional clothes for orientation events and my workout clothes. I ran out of room in my suitcase and didn’t have room for my hair appliances (hello dry shampoo, we will be seeing a lot of each other this week).
I had also been working on TPN calculations off and on all weekend, which was making me want to pull my hair out.
So I went online to print out my boarding pass and saw that my name was spelled wrong. I called Delta’s customer service but there was a 90 minute wait time. They have a call-back option so that’s what I did, and 2 hours later a representative called me back. And promptly put me on hold. Then she proceeds to tell me that I will be charged a $50 fee to correct my name on my boarding pass even though I have documentation that I made the flight reservations with the correct spelling. Um, no. So anyway, after a lot of back and forth and being put on hold, I got that squared away. It ended up not being a *huge* deal but flying stresses me out anyway, so this was not a good start to my trip.
I was planning on getting a good nights sleep last night but had a mini nervous break down when I laid down in bed. Out of nowhere I just felt really scared about everything having to do with my internship- not knowing anyone in my rotations (it will basically be like starting a new job 4 different times), not working, flying to Utah by myself, spending a week with people I don’t know, etc. etc. Poor K. He had to talk me off of the edge.
I woke up at 4am this morning and was at the airport by 5:30. This gave me plenty of time to check in and make it through security. This actually helped me feel a lot better and everything was uneventful until the plane ride.
The awful plane ride.
Our takeoff was delayed twice. The first time we had actually pulled away from the terminal but had to go back because the someone was sick on the plane. When they were escorting the person off of the plane, she collapsed in the aisle right in front of my seat. She was also throwing up everywhere. They had to call the paramedics and then sanitize the plane. I felt so bad for this lady! Then we pull up to the runway for a second time and sit there for a while because the plane is having mechanical issues. At this point people were starting to get agitated but then finally,1.5 hours after our original takeoff time, we finally left Charlotte. Hallelujah!
We landed in Utah this afternoon and I have been loving this scenery.
Orientation was from 5-8pm tonight. We met everyone working with the program and did an icebreaker to get to know each other. I have met a lot of really nice people so far! There are 60 interns.
One of my reservations about beginning this internship is that it is such a huge commitment. I wasn’t sure if I was making the right choice of taking a break from work and paying tuition for this experience when I had already found a niche in my career. Meeting all of these interns and hearing about all of the cool things they are doing was a great reminder of how much further an RD can take me. I’m back to being excited about it :)
Now I’m going to go pass out from exhaustion.