Dietetic Internship Rotations Update!

Hi friends!! So I know it’s been a bit since you’ve gotten a avocado love letter from me. Life’s been a bit crazy to tell you truth, the whole truth and nothing but the truth!

So in September, I started the second year of my Masters in Professional Dietetics and as of today there are 197 days until I graduate on June 14th! But who’s counting, am I right?

My first two rotations were interning at the Linus Pauling Institute located on Oregon State University’s Corvallis campus. And for those of you wondering what this place does, is it is one of the leading research institutes for vitamins and minerals (otherwise known as micronutrients for you nerdy nutrition peeps). The first of the two rotations was working remote, and combing through the United States Department of Agriculture and the Recommended Daily Allowances for the top nutrients for Bone, Brain and Immune Health, and Supplements and making brochures of our findings. This involved alot of nerdy analysis of things like vitamin A, B, C, D, E…. all the way down to Zinc and the rest of the micronutrient alphabet like a big ol’ bowl of alphabet soup. Speaking of soup, I really did advocate for the Immune Health brochure to include common ingredients in, as you guessed it, chicken noodle soup! While I have wanted to share this cool brochure with you when us interns finished it, I had to wait for the graphical designer (like a real professional graphic designer) to take our initial design and make it all cohesive with the Linus Pauling Institute’s branding.

Now following this fabulous dive into all things vitamins and minerals, I then began a in person research rotation on campus within the lab of my major professor, Dr. Emily Ho, a leading zinc researcher who studies all the cool things that involve zinc in broccoli, and Brussel Sprouts. And yes they do affectionately call her Dr. Broccoli. I really had to advocate for this rotation as I am interested in the more nerdy research side of things and wanted to see if I had romanticized this, or if in fact I could pull of the lab coat look.

Fun fact: I did. And I think I look pretty darn cute and smart if I do say so myself!

I was introduced to many new wet lab techniques in which I quickly learned that micropipetting takes a hella lot of concentration and one mustn’t multitask with things like carry on a conversation or jamming out to metal music or listening to intently on your lab parters cool convo while you do it. Mistakes may have been made…

I was lucky to have a lab partner that was in his first term as a Ph.D student who was getting a refresher course on wet lab techniques, who was also a registered dietitian as well as a military veteran and we got to exchange lots of camaraderie while I did my two weeks there, which I really appreciated.

So, what cool shit did I get to do while I played with lab chemicals? Great question, I learned how to do the lab experiments that use the bodies antigen and antibody response to our advantage. We use this technique for things like food sensitivity tests, pregnancy tests and a whole host of others that tell us if our bodies has foreign invaders that the body is try to fight. I did several of these, each more complex than the last with some serious chemistry and serial dilutions, taking me back to my chemistry minor days, which I loved, but man did I have to dig in the archives of my brain for those calculations.

I used human samples to test several antibody and antigen interactions as well as conducting a lab experiment that looked at liver enzymes taken from mice who where fed a high fat western diet versus mice who were fed a low fat diet, then I took this same approach on some human blood samples.

Also, I did my best, but royally f**k ed up a time or two. It was all in the name of learning, and my lab partner and lab manager were gracious and allowed me my one and only f*ck up. Kidding, science is a bunch of royal f— ups so yay science!!!

Next, I was weirdly “off” for 4 weeks and I did a whole lot of nothing, which for me is so weird and strange. I let myself rest, nap, and relax instead of stressing over extra avocado stuff, knowing that my rotations are ramping up in difficulty with planning out all the logistics and commuting nonsense that’s about to hit after the new year.

Now, I am working at the OSU Extension doing more community outreach which is fun, but not my future as a R.D. I can just tell.., My preceptor asked if I like writing about fun nerdy nutrition topics, and I quickly said ‘Hell yeah’, only more professionally of course. I just submitted the drafts for a protein article (shocker, I delve into this again! because if it’s worth saying once…) where I talk about protein needs, and animal versus plant protein as well as tackling an even more applicable and cooler topic, ‘Detox Diets- do they work?’ so stay tuned for those fun articles written by yours truly.

Honestly, writing these articles made me miss blogging. My tag line is bite size nutrition is it not? I got so busy building my 16 week course signature that I had to let something go on the preverbal back burner for a bit. I can’t promise that they will be weekly, but as I have the brain power, the bandwidth and a cool topic to talk about, I’ll try my best!!

Let me know if you’d like me to delve into any special nutrition or exercise topics that you want to know more about!

So, I’ll leave you with a video of my new friend, who I named Daisy, while I visited a working dairy farm during one of our Agricultural Days!