Howdy. I am one happy (and exhausted) camper today because I finished my food service rotation! Woop! I am just thanking sweet baby jesus that I received 6 weeks of Prior Assessed Learning credit for my work experience because I have NO idea how I would have been able to hang on for an additional 6 weeks.
I apologize for this being short and sweet but I feel like a walking zombie from this rotation. I have worked 12 hour days and gotten 4 hours of sleep every night this week and I’m about 5 minutes away from crashing for the night. So I will sum up the past 7 weeks like this:
This rotation was hard because I interned where I worked. Even though I had 40hr/wk of internship responsibilities, I could not help myself from jumping in and wanting to help whenever an issue arose. This was my fault but ultimately caused more work for myself. Also, the beginning of the school year is crazy and this added to the stress of the rotation.
Despite everything I just said, I felt like I got a lot of really good experiences that I would not have gotten had I not been an intern. I was able to spend more time in schools. I put together a promotional packet that I’m really proud of. I got to watch a health inspection. I visited another school system.
My advice to any future food service interns is to hang on and enjoy the ride. Food service is definitely crazy and unpredictable but still fun and rewarding :)
Anytime I feel like I’m having a hard time, I just look at this countdown and think about how far I have come in the past 2 years:
So here’s where I’m at now:
- Orientation- 1 week (completed!)
- Inpatient Clinical- 6 weeks (completed!)
- Outpatient Clinical- 3 weeks
- Long-Term Care Clinical- 2 weeks
- Staff Experience Clinical- 2 weeks (completed!)
- Community- 4 weeks
- School Food Service Management- 5 weeks* (completed!)
- School Nutrition Education- 2 weeks (completed!)