Interning

I've titled this blog "Chapter in Life - Interning" because that's what it is. As a recent NYU graduate in Nutrition & Dietetics, I'm fresh out into the real world, and now it's time for me to pay my dues through interning. At my last job I actually had the privilege of hiring an intern (unrelated field), and now I wish I had been a little nicer to him - being on the other end is not all fun and games. There's two major points you should fully comprehend about being an intern. 

GAIN FROM INTERNING - EXPERIENCE! As I'm sure I'll mention in countless blogs following this one, we can only learn so much from textbooks and exams. They don't teach us how to interact with other human beings, how to have confidence in ourselves, or how to necessarily apply what we learn on paper to an actual person. The point of interning is to teach us, give us confidence and hopefully help us figure out what exactly we want to do in our careers.  For example, nutrition is a wide field with countless career options - where will I be best suited? 

LOSS FROM INTERNING - $$$ Unless you are extremely fortunate to be blessed with a paid internship. Most of us however, will need to appreciate our internships for the working experience and find other ways to support ourselves. Interning will still take up hours of your day, so things can get a bit stressful trying to manage a job, and internship, classes, or anything else you've got going on in your life. 

So with those two things in mind, I've committed myself to spending the next 3- 4 months interning wherever I can and documenting what I learn with each experience. I'll be doing some interning here in New York City before moving to Puebla, Mexico for the remainder of the summer. Yeah, I know... Mexico. The short version of that story goes like this: In January I took a winter-session nutrition course in Puebla through NYU - which involved a lot of traveling and lectures at a fantastic university UPAEP. It changed my life and I fell in love with both Mexico and a Mexican (there has to be a little romance in every good story, right?) When I went back in March to visit, my novio had arranged an appointment with Gaby, the Nutrition Coordinator at UPAEP. Gaby suggested I come for the summer and do some interning. It took me about two seconds to realize I had no good reasons not to go. 

Here or there - my goal is to work in a variety of settings as much as possible, and to share with you what I learn along the way. It's going to be an interesting journey. I'll end each entry with INTERN ADVICE - hopefully to help you during the interning chapter of your life. 

Goodluck! 

ST