- Please provide a brief description of your STEP Signature Project. Write two or three sentences describing the main activities your STEP Signature Project entailed.
For my STEP Signature Project, I attended the Society for Nutrition Education and Behavior’s annual conference in Atlanta, Georgia. The theme of this year’s conference was “Designing Tech Competence in your Digital World”, with many speakers focusing on how the COVID-19 pandemic influenced the use of technology to deliver nutrition education. I went to various sessions in which nutrition educators discussed how they use technology in their research or work, as well as had many networking opportunities.
- What about your understanding of yourself, your assumptions, or your view of the world changed/transformed while completing your STEP Signature Project? Write one or two paragraphs to describe the change or transformation that took place.
When people ask me what my plans for the future are, I tell them I am going to be a dietitian. However, when questioned further about what kind of dietitian I want to be, I have never had an answer. There are so many different settings for dietitians: research, inpatient, food service, long-term care, outpatient, community wellness programs, and so much more. When talking to my peers, they always seem to have one or two settings in which they would like to work. However, I have always been open to any setting. While this gives me a lot of opportunity, it is also overwhelming, as I want to narrow down what types of jobs I will apply for in less than a year. The conference I attended for my STEP Signature Project focused on nutrition research. After 3 days at the conference, my understanding of myself and my future career plans have transformed, as I have been able to rule out becoming a research dietitian. Being able to cross something off the list was refreshing. It has allowed me to narrow down my list and focus more energy on learning about other dietitian jobs.
- What events, interactions, relationships, or activities during your STEP Signature Project led to the change/transformation that you discussed in number two, and how did those affect you? Write three or four paragraphs describing the key aspects of your experiences completing your STEP Signature Project that led to this change/transformation
There were several moments throughout the three days of the conference that helped me to cross research off the list. Before the conference, I was browsing the agenda listing all the sessions that would be presented. I was trying to determine which sessions I would be interested in attending while in Atlanta. When going through the sessions, I was excited because so many sounded so interesting. I struggled to pick some that were held at the same time because I wanted to attend both. I flagged a few different ones on topics including prenatal/newborn nutrition, social media, food insecurity among college students, and healthy aging. While at the conference, I made sure to attend these sessions. The first day of the conference, the sessions taking place were not any of the ones I was especially interested in. While I was engaged and ended up learning a lot, I was looking forward to the next two days. The second and third days, I was able to attend some of the sessions I flagged. I ended up not being as engaged in these sessions as I thought I would be. While I thought the topics sounded interesting, I realized the actual research method was not something that interested me. This was the first indication that research may not be for me.
Additionally, I had many interactions that helped me realize this transformation. Specifically, on the second and third days I was able to go to poster presentations that nutrition educators and students made for their research. When talking to them, I again had the feeling that research was not for me. One reason for this was because some of their research ended up producing statistically insignificant results. For example, one educator’s research focused on using nutrition education interventions to decrease consumption of added sugars and sodium in daycares. While you would think that increasing education would lead to results, they found that the sodium intake did not decrease significantly. For all the time and energy used to carry out this study, this seems disheartening. I began to feel that I would rather evaluate research done by others in order to deliver more effective nutrition education, rather than conduct the research myself.
Another reason these interactions transformed me is that much of the research process done by these individuals was time spent reading, analyzing, and writing. I am currently in a dietetic internship, and what I have learned so far from this is that I have enjoyed being up on my feet talking to patients and their families more than the computer work. I think that in my career I would like to be more involved in direct treatment and care, rather than research. As I went through each poster and talked to each researcher, they all had to go through the same process. They had their abstract, methods, intervention, results, and conclusion. I think that the tediousness of doing this over and over with each new research question is something that would make me lose interest quickly. Additionally, some of the research questions took years to complete. I do not think I have the patience to embark on such a long process, further affirming that this may not be the route for me.
- Why is this change/transformation significant or valuable for your life? Write one or two paragraphs discussing why this change or development matters
This transformation is extremely valuable to my life, as it is helping me to decide what I want to do with the rest of my life in my career. As an incoming senior year, I have one year left before I am going to be taking my RD exam, applying for jobs, and entering the workforce. From there, I will spend the majority of my life working, and I do not want to be doing something that is not interesting to me. I think that having an open mind is good to some extent, but as graduation draws nearer, I would like to have a greater understanding of myself and what I want out of life. The Society for Nutrition Education and Behavior conference was an incredible experience that brought me clarity on my career path. While I have decided that research is not something I want to pursue, I still had a great time at the conference and learned a lot. For example, the wide variety of research topics that I encountered was mind-boggling. I learned about things I didn’t know fell into the scope of nutrition professionals, such as developing POS systems for produce prescription programs at grocery stores. It is exciting to think that there is so much possibility out there, and I feel I am one step closer to discovering what works best for me.