ACCEPTED!! May 8, 2009

This morning I was officially accepted into the Dietetic Internship Program at Life Univeristy in Marietta, Georgia!  It starts on September 8, 2009 and hopefully I’ll be in Provo working until my contract is up in August; I just need to find a job now.

It took seriously the longest time to get to this point.  I’ll have to explain the application process to let you feel the full effect of what I’ve been doing with my life for the past few weeks. The process goes something like this: send in my blood, sweat and tears (aka application) in by Feb 15 and also register online with a certain website and rank the internships in order of preference.  Then, go through interview process if required.  Wait, hopefully patiently, until April 19 at 11pm when the server crashes and it takes hours to find out where you weren’t accepted.  Sounds fun, right?  (I guess it goes a little differently if you were accepted on the first round, but I wasn’t so I don’t know what that’s like).

Wow, what a process that was!  I visited my top choice in Napa, CA over Christmas and flew out to my next choice in Tucson, AZ in January to try and make sure I’d made a good impression and that they knew who I was when looking over my application.  Figuring out where to apply was stressful enough, and filling out the application was so detailed that my program even had a class dedicated to it.  I figured I’d get SOMETHING after all that hard work.  No, not the case.  April 11 came and left and my pride and future left with it.  My program director assured us that we would be able to scramble for the few internships that still had openings.  It turned out that over 4,000 people applied and only about 2,000 were placed, which left about 2,000 people to scramble for only 39 spots.  After 3 days of hard core crying and feeling disapointed, I got the dusty application together again.  I knew I shouldn’t give up because I really felt like not getting an internship was what not what my future really held.

So I applied to about 10 out of the 25 places that had openings.  I needed to get my letters of recommendations together again only to find that one of the letters was deleted and I couldn’t get a copy of it to send out that day.  By divine intervention one of my professors was in her office that day and offered to write me a letter, well I guess it went more like me begging her through sobs if she would even be willing.  I felt a little hopeless that day thinking that I was competing against so many qualified people.  I didn’t hear anything from the internships that I applied to, and I didn’t know where to go.  One of my friends told me that she called every single internship and one said they would hold her a spot if she overnighted the application.  I called every single internship and one told me they might have a spot and they’d call the next day.  Call she did and she said she’d hold a spot for me if I’d overnight my application to her too, and that I would know if I was accepted by Friday.  Friday came and left, and so did Monday, Tuesday and Wednesday.  FINALLY on Thursday (today) I got the acceptance letter in the mail!!!  I have an internship.

Moral of the story?  Never give up.  I learned a lot of patience with the process and also that the Lord never forgets who we are.  I felt all along that whatever happened was the right thing, and I knew that I would get an internship after a little sweat.  I also learned some confidence in my abilities.  I know how many qualified people are so deserving of an internship, but it took me believing in myself to persist and believe that I was one of those deserving people.

I’M GOING TO GEORGIA!!!!