Atlantic Dietitians of Canada Conference

This past weekend, I road tripped to Moncton to attend the Atlantic Dietitians of Canada conference with Tuck and the Prof who went to Kenya with us. She was asked to speak about her experience supervising students in an international placement. We ended up spending the entire morning finishing the presentation before our 11:30 presentation. We had found out the night before that we would be in fact presenting along side our prof, and while we tried to prepare by figuring out what exactly she wanted us to talk about, she just told us not to worry and we'd be fine. Besides that one time I gave a presentation on Non-Diabetic Hypoglycemia in front of a handful of island dietitians as part of my clinical placement, I have never had the opportunity to speak in front of a large group of dietitians. This terrifies me a little. It's not so much that I dislike public speaking. Public speaking doesn't bother me at all, especially after giving so many presentations in front of 100+ people in Kenya, but it was the group of people I was presenting to that had me a touch rattled. These are people who will potentially be hiring me in 14 months (eek!) and people who will be my colleagues.

Tuck and I sat in the front row while our prof presented and occasionally asked us questions or to clarify certain concepts of the presentation. Eventually we found ourselves correcting her and adding comments to what she was saying (she asked us to correct her when it was appropriate and to add to her presentation whenever we could) so we just stood up and kind of took over. We had the whole conference room chuckling at our misadventures which resulted in lessons learned, and had them tearing up at some of the outcomes we were able to achieve. In the end, the presentation went way better than I ever would have imagined it would! We had a line up of dietitians wanting to ask us questions after our presentation and probably could have sold all 96 aprons right then and there.

High on life from the presentation, we skipped out on the last session and went to Costco. I bought some really awesome tupperware, and must admit that I enjoy my lunch just a little bit more everyday that I use them.

Dietitians are known to stereotypically all have the same haircut and sense of style. The profs at UPEI joke about it all the time but this was the first time I ever actually witnessed the phenomenon with my own eyes. When sitting in the back of the conference room, you look ahead and all you see are a sea of bob hair cuts and dangly earrings. I couldn't help but feel a little left out! I wonder how many other professions have a stereotypical look to them? I'm sure a lot, I just never noticed before. I can't decide if I want to run out and get a hair cut or keep my locks in rebellion.