Weeks 5 and 6 - But most importantly, Turnpike Troubadours @ 4th on Broadway

Texas Tech University

Carolyn Greene

I'm two weeks behind, but better late than never!  It's be a busy couple of weeks, and our project is finally about to come to an end with our final presentation tomorrow.  I just can't believe that the bulk of this internship is basically over!  We have two more weeks left, but we'll be doing our second food service rotation at the Market, so the hectic part concluded on Friday, when we finalized our presentation slides and all the material for it.  All that's left is to present it to Hospitality's admin, and then we'll be done!

For week 5, most of our work day consisted of brainstorming ideas for our final project.  Emma and I were in Marketing for the first three days of the week.  We had a second day working the resource fair during RRO's, but we also got the chance to talk to all the different specialists within the department, and we were able to get a little inspiration for how to go about marketing the capstone event.  These three days were laid back and informal, but we learned so much about how the department markets and plans all its events!  We had plenty to take away to apply to our project in the following week.

As I mentioned in my last post, I said I would be hanging out with Sports Nutrition and the Texas Tech football team.  I went in twice that week, on Tuesday and Wednesday, and got to see how sports nutrition is actively involved with the athlete's health.  On Tuesday, not much happened, but I handed out pre-made recovery smoothies to the incoming freshman athletes after their lift sessions.  I came in an hour earlier at 6am on Wednesday and actually helped make the smoothies for the athletes.  One of the smoothies we made was a weight gain shake that added up to a whopping 908 calories per serving!!  

One of the things I have to constantly remind myself of is that the conventional concepts and teachings of dietetics does not really apply to sports nutrition.  Nutrition in athletics is all about fueling an athlete for performance, and sometimes, proper fuel means an athlete needs to eat 6000 calories a day to meet a weight goal.  Changing mentality is definitely hard, but it's such a cool perspective to look into!  I'm so thankful for Dayna, the sports dietitian here, and Jenny, the sports dietitian back home at Virginia Tech for showing me around and letting me get involved in this part of dietetics!

For Thursday and Friday of week 5, we all had a rotation with Top Tier Catering.  For Thursday, we met with all the different staff members who helped run catering, and we saw how bookings were made, and how client demands were met.  On the second day, the associate director of Top Tier gave us a tour of the catering facilities.  We'd been hearing about the different venues all around campus for weeks, such as the Frazier and Merket, but we had never actually been in the locations in person, so it was really neat seeing what all the fuss was about! 

Frazier Alumni Pavilion

McKenzie-Merket Alumni Center

  

That night, we all went out to the First Friday Art Trail again.  Kayla, someone we'd met in Hospitality, introduced us to Crusty's Wood Fired Pizza, which was served out of a street truck.  It was delicious, which says a lot because I'm not a huge pizza person!  It was so fun getting to hang out with everyone, while checking out the local art and music scene!

This piece is actually a super tiny room in a box!

Week 6 started off with a real bang, since Monday was the 4th of July!  The night before, I went out with Nick and V to see a live show again.  This time, the Dirty River Boys and the Turnpike Troubadours performed for 4th on Broadway, which was a street dance held the night before the 4th of July in Downtown Lubbock.  I'd never heard of either group until only a few weeks ago, and I can honestly say that I really enjoyed the show!  They're both on Spotify, so give them a listen!  On the actual 4th of July, Kayla invited us to a cookout, where we had great BBQ and got to see a fireworks display!  The weekend was just so fun overall - probably one of the most memorable Independence Day's I've ever had!

Turnpike Troubadour at 4th on Broadway!

The rest of the week was crunch time.  We spent every day in the office putting together the last of our project.  Since I have InDesign from when I went to design school, I was in charge of the table tents and social media graphics.  I always think that my old major is of no help for dietetics, but it always comes in handy when I least expect it!  Over all, we were so productive last week.  Almost everything was done by the time we left on Thursday, and the finishing touches were added Friday morning before we met with Alan to go over our presentation.  The kinks were worked out during our practice runs, and now we're eager to show off what we've done for the last six weeks to the department!

To end the week, Emma, Megan, and I bought tickets to see Pirates of Penzance in McKenzie Park at the Moonlight Musical Amphitheater.  I admit, I went in with rather low expectations, since I'd gotten used to Broadway shows from when I lived in New York City.  I was so happy that the group went above and beyond what I had expected!  The musical was about a young pirate who leaves his pirate ship to go off and be his own person, with the intent of finding himself a bride from civil society, but realizes he is still contractually obligated to stay with the crew.  The whole story was ridiculous, but it was a comedy so I guess a quirky plot line is appropriate in this situation!  We all had a blast, and I'm so glad we decided to go on the spur of the moment!

One of the closing scenes of Pirates of Penzance!

So that concludes the recounting of the last two weeks.  Tomorrow is the presentation, and then we'll be wrapping up the internship with two weeks at the Market.  Stay tuned to hear about how our presentation goes!