In the movie, "Holes," kids explain to the "new guy" about how digging the holes day after day turns out. The first day doesn't seem too bad because the blisters are only starting to form and everything is new. The second day, they say, is the worst because now you have to work through the pain of existing blisters.

Not exactly sure what made me think of that. Today, the excitement dwindled a little and everything is just starting to become real...well, and the fact that I obtained blisters by taking the long tour yesterday and today I had to walk with said blisters. Ouch. 

There is no doubt in my mind that I made the right choice by coming to U of M. The first item on the agenda was to sit in a conference room with our director, her assistant, and all 12 interns. We went over our orientation binders, policies and procedures, and our master rotation schedule (which I'll get to later!) Not only did we do that for some time, but what I found awesome was our next task. We got a slip of paper and were asked what our expectations were of the internship. A long time I was seeing as from, "what do they expect of me?", but now it was our chance to tell them what we want to learn and what we expect. My list was as follows...

• To be challenged!
• To make networking and lifelong connections with other interns, hospital staff, and preceptors
• To find my specific interest within pediatrics and become passionate about it
• To pass my RD exam on the first try and obtain a great job with a competitive edge
• To be confident and competent by my graduation in July
• To be respected in the hospital as a crucial member of any multidisciplinary team
• To have fun and step out of my comfort zones

Just to name a few. Then, we went around the table and shared our ideas and our director took a sincere interest in what we were saying. I know I made the right choice and it makes me feel amazing to say it.

After that, all 12 interns sat together at lunch. We get along really well and it's nice that we can all relate. No, we don't all eat perfect at lunch and today another intern bought us all chocolate chip cookies from the cafe and they were A-MAZING!! 

To end the day, we sat in a computer education lab and learned about the patient software they had. That was also interesting how diverse programs can be. The program UofM uses makes other programs look so basic and almost as if they miss lots of information. Of course, I have a project due tomorrow already and two others that are due on Monday. Yayyy, being an intern...

As for my master schedule (and it's been a long day, so for now I'll keep it short), I'm starting off in my foodservice rotation. Which I think will be a nice slow transition as much of my experience is in hospital foodservice. My clinical rotations, which I won't start until January 3rd, will be in areas such as...

• pediatric bone marrow transplants
• cardiac medicine
• clinical nutrition management
• neurology/otolaryngology
• pediatric renal
• pediatric intensive care unit
• neonatal intensive care unit
• about 6 weeks of varied pediatric random disease states

The next 10 months have been mapped out for me...so now I just gotta hop in the car and GO!!!