nutrn's blog

It is now the end of the Spring 2012 semester, Everyone has so much to do and has Finals coming up this week. The best way to get through finals is all based on your time management skills! Remember to make sure your giving yourself enough time for sleep, meals, and school work. Finals are the most stressful period of the year, especially for those who are graduating this year, who find themselves occupied with real life stressors, such as job searching and figuring out whats next after life at the University of Massachusetts Amherst!

My suggestions for Finals, are:
1) Find a place where you can focus and is least distracting. A Good place is the W.E.B Dubois Library right on campus or the Engineering Library! Or off campus coffe places such as Starbucks, loose goose cafe or Raos coffee shop.

2) Learn your study habits, whether its reading, making flash cards, conversational about what yur learned, watching videos, or taking notes! everyone learns differently, you’ll do much better if you know which way your learn the material faster and memorize it!

3)Make sure you are making realistic goals on when you want to get things done, your time management skills mean everything! Set goals everyday on how much studying and work you’ll be getting accomplished each day! What helps me is writing what I’m going to do each day down and crossing out whats already done!

4)Most importantly, make sure your getting a good night sleep and giving your self the nutrition you need to do well in Finals! Give it your all

Happy end of the semester to all, and I wish you all the best on Finals!!! Spring 2012

*Josmely*

 Sorry those pictures didn’t show up in the comment on Hope’s post, here they are!

Here are some more photos! ~Celina
       

Today was our second multicultural breakfast of the 2011-2012 academic year. I must say that this event turned out as successful as our first multicultural breakfast that was held last semester (Fall 2011). Two of my friends attended! It would have been a lot nicer if more people attended, however. Compared to last semester I thought fewer people were able to attend, whereas we had a lot more attend last semester. Regardless, I thought this multicultural breakfast event was even more successful because, as Dr. Elena Carbone stated: The breakfast dishes created were more diverse than last semester. I would have to agree with that. There were a good amount of interesting ethnic dishes served that I personally just experienced for the first time. It was great. Everyone loved them. My ethnic dish for this semester’s breakfast was a Spanish bread pudding, known as torrijas. This sweet and delicious Spanish breakfast dish is traditionally eaten during Lent, and it is believed that the Andalucian convents during the 15th century made this as a way of using up stale bread. Hence, it is believed that that was where torrijas originated from. There are a few varieties of this dish, though I used the basic recipe. Although it is a bread pudding, us Americans would simply just call it French toast because that’s basically what it is. Europeans must call it bread pudding, in general. The recipe I used for this dish called for:

• 4-6 slices of stale baguette or white bread
• 3/4 cup milk
• 1 egg
• vegetable oil for frying, such as canola or corn oil, NOT olive oil
• 1/8 tsp vanilla extract (optional)
• sugar and cinnamon to sprinkle (optional)
• honey to drizzle (optional)

Last Tuesday I had the opportunity to attend SPHHS research day. This was an event where a group of public health majors/grad students were able to present their research. I came across some very interesting projects that they had been working on.

The first, was a research on the effect of dietary zinc intake on stunting growth among adolescent girls aged 10-19 years. Research concluded that girls with little zinc in their diet had indeed been stunted in their growth. Also, when just a small amount of zinc was added into their diet, it showed great effects in improving their growth. Research like this can be further explored and can hopefully be the basis of setting up a program to help girls with zinc deficiency in the future.

The second study that caught my attention was called: “The Relationship between Depression and Risk of Hypertensive Disorders of Pregnancy among Hispanic Women”.

This study found that there was actually “no association between minor depression and PIHD”. However, it is suggested that perhaps women who have major depression have an increased risk of having a hypertensive disorder.

Monday March 26, 6-8PM

There was a Gluten Intolerance and Celiac Disease presentation earlier this evening at Cooley Dickinson Hospital in Northampton. It was a free event that is part of a larger “Living Well with Diabetes Program” that is being presented at Cooley Dickinson.

The first half of the event was an informational presentation on the science and clinical point of view of Gluten Intolerance and Celiac Disease by Jaya Agrawal, MD, MPH. She explained about the different types of symptoms and treatments that go along with being diagnosed with Celiac.

The second half of the event was an informational presentation about how to apply the knowledge into their daily lives. Cathy Bertinuson, MS, RD, LDN, CDE presented many tips and ways to go about eating a gluten free diet. She gave many tips about specific foods and also specific restaurants that would provide gluten free foods as well.

Alyssa and I both arrived to help set up displays, tables, and many many free samples. Below are some pictures from the event! It was a really informative event and there were many people who came up to us asking us who we were. They asked us some questions about the snacks and it gave us a real sense of what it would be like to interact with people dealing with nutritional related diseases first hand.

It was pretty fun to help out, and the staff were all very kind and let us have some free samples ourselves!

Here is a picture of the demo items of different types of gluten free products.

These are different gluten free snacks that were available to taste

The room was pretty much filled with people waiting to learn more about Celiac and Gluten Intolerance! (although you can’t really tell from this angle)

-Linda (:

This video was an assignment that I completed with the help of my class partner. The class is Nutrition 572: Community Nutrition with Dr. Kannan.

We had lots of fun making the video and working on this presentation. The professor liked it very much, so she mentioned our work to a local entrepreneur…let’s just say “we may have discovered the start  of something good.”

More on this later. For now…Enjoy!

The Umass Myplate challenge is a student initiative here at Umass to try to increase awareness about choosing healthier foods (It is an independent study). I volunteered last Wednesday for their intervention at all dining commons (DC’s) on campus. My tasks were divided into two hour-long sessions.

The first hour was to stand around the table and encourage people to participate in the mini activities. This task was a bit difficult because the line for the “wing bar” was next to our table and everyone in line covered our display. The table also had a comparison set-up of best to worst plates of foods. This might have been a good reference, but it wasn’t so for this one student. Apparently he was not a nutrition major and did not know much about MyPlate, but he knew his studies. He came up to the table enraged at our display saying that showing foods and calories will just cause more eating disorders at the DC’s. He walked away after having said that and left us all thinking about the display (thank goodness I was just the messenger…)

The second hour was definitely a better experience. Another volunteer  and I went to many tables in both Worcester & the Oak Room. This consisted of walking up to tables and asking students to answer nutrition-related questions for a chance to win $5.00 to use at any C-Store. This was a great chance to share nutritional knowledge with students who, surprisingly, had very little  insight on healthy eating. Overall, this was a great opportunity to reach out to the general student body; I would recommend it to anyone.

What’s so great about UMass? Honestly, I’m having such a hard time answering this simple question – not because I think there’s nothing great about this university but because I find everything great about it. You name it: academics, the environment, opportunities, and the people.

Academics
With 88 majors, UMass Amherst is a great place to explore your interests, become a well-rounded individual, and choose your career path. In addition to taking your core classes, enroll in a cooking, art, music, or even yoga class!

Environment
Located in the Pioneer Valley, UMass offers a scenic escape from the hustle and bustle of the city life. I enjoy seeing mountains in the background when walking to and from class. In class during the summertime, I sometimes gaze out into the deep blue sky, thinking about my intellectually stimulating lectures.

Opportunities
Coming to UMass as a lost, confused, and diffident student, I never expected to find many professional and research opportunities, but I did. Take advantage of every opportunity that you can find!

People
My college experience has been wonderfully entertaining because of the different types of people I’ve met here. Although you may initially be worried about meeting new people and making new friends, you’ll eventually find friends or a group of friends who share the same interests or have the same goals. Just smile and say, “Hi.”

Atlanta. April. Awesome!

This is a great program that is offered twice per year. I would like to talk about it because I attended a few semesters ago. Part of who I am today has been shaped by this event. I recommend this to anyone interested in becoming more involved in everything from community to academics.

The great thing is that, next year, instead of holding the conference in Atlanta (where they usually have it) it will be in Boston! This is really an opportunity you don’t want to miss!

Here is a short clip that one of the interviewers took at the conference when I attended.

WOW, I just realized I looked younger then. I guess UMass did take a toll on me!

Anyways, please consider making it. The dates and more information can be found at the Center’s webpage:  http://www.ncslcollege.com/conferences/

Happy Holidays!

UMNA Resume Night

On Tuesday December 6th, UMNA hosted a small Resume Night and welcomed Mary Ellen from Career Services. Though the event was geared towards juniors and seniors looking towards internships, I went because I wanted to get a head start on my resume and how to approach it to apply for jobs and internships during the summer.

Here is just a list of some things I learned:
1) On the career services website, there is a database that allows you to look at current employers that are looking for UMASS students. Through this database, you can start a search for an employer that may fit your criteria. This can be found on the UMASS website: http://www.umass.edu/careers/  and simply click on the “Career connect” button.

2) One big thing I learned from Mary Ellen is that you may have more skills then you believe. From any and all experiences, from volunteering to part time jobs, you can derive sets of skills that you have used for those experiences. For example, one girl had a job working at the pizza station in the dining common. At first glance, this doesn’t seem like much but on her resume she described her ability to multitask, keep a sanitary work station, and work with many different kinds of people (skills that employers are interested in)

3) On that note, I also realized it’s important to document everything and anything you do because you never know when it could be useful for a specific job or internship that you apply for. (even projects or papers you have done in classes)

Being a sophomore, I’m still unsure of what job I want or what I need to do. However, I think learning about how to write a good resume and cover letter could be very beneficial in applying for internships and jobs so I encourage anyone to stop by Career Services to get a little help.

Mass Life Science Center
Mary Ellen had also told us about an informational meeting for a paid internship for Mass Life Sciences Center. A link to their internship page is here: http://www.masslifesciences.com/grants/challenge.html

Though it is a very competitive program, I encourage anyone to apply. You simply fill out a free application and it is stored into their database for 6 months. Over those 6 months, employers will go in and search for potential interns that match with what they would like. Though about a third of these companies commonly take Engineering or Biology majors, it really depends on what the company is looking for. You can also update your application anytime to update it or withdraw if you’re no longer interested. I thought this was a pretty interesting opportunity so I wanted to share it!

- Linda Le