Intern Life: Week 14

My time at UH is halfway done! Since I don't remember the specifics for each day, I'll just talk about my week as a whole instead!

I'll start with a fun thing I did this week. I joined the CPSDA! That stands for the Collegiate and Professional Sports Dietitians Association. I took advantage of their cheaper student rate while I was still an intern. I'm just trying to take advantage of everything that might help me become a sports dietitian.

I created more educational materials this week. I've also been helping Tara with a few projects in the cafe, like taking inventory and ordering. I figured I might as well put my food service background to good use. I ran to the store with Tara one morning too. I did more Bod Pod tests this week for the track team and to finish up baseball. It's so funny to see the difference between the different athletes. The baseball guys didn't care of anyone watched them take the test. They'd strip down to their spandex pants and just all hang out in the bod pod room and make fun of their friends while they were in the machine. The girls would make sure no one else was in the room, close the door, and didn't want anyone watching them. In order to reduce surface area for the test, they weren't allowed to wear jewelry during the test. I had to ask so many boys to take jewelry off. Felt weird to ask. I think every other girl had a belly button ring too. Those just seem like they'd be painful. Overall I think my favorite question was from a guy on the track team. He seemed super nervous for the test. After I explained how it would work, he asked, "is it going to fill up with water while I'm in there." I tried so hard not to laugh. No wonder he looked terrified!

We had another intern meeting with Claudia. We talked about resumes and caught up with everyone. It is definitely convenient to already be on campus for these meetings.

My big project for the week was a cooking demo for the track team. I planned the recipes, created handouts, and basically did it all by myself. It was a lot of fun! I went shopping with some donated HEB giftcards from the cafe. I went to an HEB close to UH. Tara told me I wasn't allowed to go to the HEB on Scott street because I'd get shot, so I went to a different one. When I first pulled up, I didn't want to get out of my car though because the entire parking lot was covered in crows! I felt like I was in "The Birds." It was super creepy. The store was pretty deserted since it was early in the morning. I did keep running into the same fireman who flirted with me on every other aisle while he shopped with his fire department.

I ended up doing two back to back cooking demos. The first was for a group of women's sprinters and the second was for men's/women's throwers from the track team. Let me complain for moment about this. The track coaches tried to cancel the second cooking demo the day of, which is super rude. Allison told him no, they would have to come. Then, the coach pops his head in during my first cooking demo and says, "we canceled that for the thrower right?" I told him no, I was still planning on it because they didn't give us enough notice. He said, "well I canceled it this morning." I told him I've been planning this for at least a week and did my shopping 3 days ago. He felt like an idiot and they came. It all worked out, but I swear men just think food appears or something.

We did the same recipes for both groups. My goal was just to choose easy and healthy recipes that a college student might actually make. First I made a salsa chicken in the crockpot. It was an easy recipe that even hid some veggies in it. We also made a black bean salad and a healthy dessert! The dessert was called banana peanut butter smudgies. You basically mash up a ripe banana with peanut butter and freeze it between two graham crackers. It's like a healthy ice cream sandwich! It went really well. They seemed to really like the recipes and I got a lot of really good feedback in the days following from the athletes and coaches. And now pictures because that's why people like these blog things right?