Stories About Students
Hi, my name is Dayna Pachta. I am 21 years old and am studying dietetics at Kansas State University! I grew up very near Manhattan in the small town of Riley, KS.
When I came to K-State, I was confident I wanted to pursue a career in healthcare because I’ve always enjoyed science and I strive to be people-oriented. Yet, I didn’t know exactly which major was for me. In my first couple undergraduate years, I took some science courses, was open option, and even studied accounting for a while. However, I found that I was just working toward doing something I was decent at, rather than actually enjoying the subject matter. That’s when I realized my desire to find something I could be passionate about.
After a couple years of being away from home and learning to live independently, I had become extremely interested and aware of how eating well could positively impact my health. With my ever-increasing interest in nutrition and science, it was obvious that I should pursue a career that included those focuses. From there, I began researching majors offered through K-State related to nutrition and discovered dietetics. At the beginning of my junior year, I switched into the College of Human Ecology to study dietetics and couldn’t be happier. I love this major because it involves science, people, food, and nutrition. I am also intrigued by the wide spectrum of career areas that dietitians can pursue.
Outside of my academics, I enjoy running, reading, spending time outdoors, and cooking for family and friends! Currently, I am involved in KSU Student Dietetic Association; I am the secretary for Sensible Nutrition and Body Image Choices (SNAC) and am a member of Kappa Omicron Nu, Phi Kappa Phi, and Kappa Delta Sorority. I work at Meadowlark Hills as a Certified Nurse Aid and spend most of my time preparing meals for residents in the household.
In May 2015, I will graduate from Kansas State University with my B.S.in Dietetics and Minor in Business Administration! I am going to apply for didactic internships next spring and am excited about all the places I can go. I am grateful for all the opportunities that K-State has provided me and hope to find more ways to grow as a young professional in the coming year!
My name is Joel David Morgan. I am from Wichita, Ks. I am 21 years old and a senior studying dietetics at Kansas State University! I started out my collegiate career as a computer science major. After completing a semesters worth of programming classes and spending all of my weekends on projects just to get an A, I realized that it just wasn’t for me. I wanted to do something I was more interested in, not just something I was good at. I was interested in Nutrition and after meeting a representative from Dietetics at the career fair I decided to give it a shot. I had prior experience with dietitians in High School as I worked with Olinda Harbaugh MS, RD, LD to help me cut weight for wrestling. The biggest part for me is the versatility of the degree. You can find yourself working in a variety of different fields. It really is unique and there are not a lot of other majors out there like it. Since I started out in Dietetics I have wanted to get more involved with other students. I have currently been working at Kramer Dining Center as an Undergraduate Management Assistant for the past few years, and I have been with Kramer since the first semester I have came to college. I have had the rewarding experience to work with great Dieticians and food service managers that have helped me along my way. Away from work I have been extremely active in SDA! As Vice President I was able to launch the SDA website with the intent of giving back to others. I think this website is just a stepping-stone of big things to come for SDA. Currently, I am serving my first semester as President and have had the privilege of helping so many students and K-State staff. This experience has been great for me and there are so many more things I could talk about. Overall, I can’t thank all of my fellow students who have encouraged and helped me along the way. I hope that I can be a future role model and mentor for future dietetic students. My goal is to leave a legacy for others to follow. As the visionary of this organization I can’t wait see what else is in store for all of us. I am looking forward to my future in the field and hope I get the opportunity to share it with all of you.
Joel Morgan
Hi my name is Courtney Bothwell, I am 22 years old and am originally from Hutchinson, Kansas. This is my fifth year of undergraduate studies and this May I will be graduating with degrees in Dietetics, Human Nutrition, and Kinesiology with an Exercise Physiology emphasis. In addition to academics, I also work part time as an Undergraduate Management Assistant at Derby Dining Center on campus and volunteer for the Manhattan Cross Country Club where I coach kids in grades K-6th.
Growing up, I had always had a passion for athletics, and specifically running. My first nutrition lecture was actually while I was at cross-country camp in high school. Ever since then I have had increasing interest in learning about how our activities and eating habits relate to each other! This interest is why I chose the dual Nutrition, Kinesiology major upon enrolling my freshmen year at K-State with intentions of becoming a Physician's Assistant or Physical Therapist.
As you can see, my aspirations of becoming a PA/PT have shifted towards becoming a Dietitian. This is because the more I job shadowed those occupations the less intrigued I became, and started gravitating more towards RD's in my visits. At the time I didn't have the heart to drop my Kinesiology degree when I added Dietetics, and looking back I'm glad I stuck with my gut. I think that having a strong physiological background of exercise and movement can be beneficial in multiple areas of dietetic practice.
This spring I am applying for didactic internships, and have realized that Kansas State has provided me with the education and skill set needed to do my absolute best no matter where I end up!
My name is Annie Pitts and I am 25 years old. I grew up in Leawood, Kansas and stayed in Leawood until I went to college in Fayetteville at University of Arkansas. My journey to dietetics is complicated and I am very non-traditional! My freshman year I took pre-med classes, but then my sophomore year I was in a repelling accident (broke about 15 bones), so I had to take a medical leave from school. I then went back to school after a semester off, to finish prerequisites for dental hygiene school. After starting dental hygiene school, I then had to take another medical leave, this time for a year and a half. During this time, my passion for nutrition and dietetics continued to grow and develop. I am so happy that Kansas State offers such a wonderful online program, so I can finish school in dietetics! As all of you know, there is so much to learn and so many different avenues to take in this profession. I am looking forward to see where I will end up. I am interested in consultation, sustainability, and public health. Right now, I live downtown, Kansas City with my husband. I work as an office assistant at Dr. Tague’s Center for Nutrition, which focuses on achieving “optimum health” for patients. I love working there and have learned so much! My time is spent developing my relationship with Jesus, spending time with family and friends, studying for school, and getting involved in memberships. I have no children yet, but I hope to in the future. It has been a joy getting to know some of you better through these website postings. I am looking forward to meeting more of you in the future!
Hi, my name is Emma Link. I grew up half in Guam, and half in Wichita, KS. Currently, I am 22 years old and majoring in Dietetics as well as Public Health Nutrition. In addition to going to school, I work part time at Derby Dining Center as an Undergraduate Management Assistant. I came to K-State right out of high school and did not have a good sense of direction in my life. The only things I knew for sure were: 1) I was very interested in nutrition and 2) I wanted to move away from Kansas someday. That interest was strong enough to point me in the direction I’m going in today and help me develop a passion for dietetics. In the fall of this year, I will be applying to didactic internships and if I am accepted, I will be moving to Philadelphia, Arizona, or Virginia. It is so exciting to see those little ideas I had as an 18 year old, fresh out of high school, evolve into my entire life.
In the beginning of my dietetics education, I liked the idea of working with athletes or patients one on one as a career. Recently, I’ve become more attracted to the idea of impacting large groups or populations of people in a public health setting. They say dream big, right? After graduation and my dietetic internship I want to be a Peace Corps volunteer so that I can use my nutrition knowledge to impact an entire village. I’ve always really liked the quote by Chuck Palahniuk, “The goal isn’t to live forever, the goal is to create something that will.” Hopefully, a career involving dietetics and public health will allow me to create something or make a lasting impact that will live on long after I do.
My name is Kayla Fitzgerald and I’m 26 years old. I live in Charleston, South Carolina with my husband and my 6 month old baby boy. I enjoy fishing, hunting, going to the beach, yoga, and reading. My husband is a chef so it’s been fun to show him that food can taste good even without a pound of butter!
I went to college right out of high school and obtained a Bachelor’s degree in Business/Marketing. My original major was Dietetics but at the time I wasn’t ready to put in the necessary work. After I graduated I figured that I would end up back in school for Dietetics but the thought of going back and sitting in a classroom 5 days a week was not for me. So 5 years later and a little more grown up here I am in the distance Dietetics program at Kansas State University finally on the path to doing something I’m truly passionate about. The distance program at Kansas State has been amazing and I’m so happy that I found a way to pursue my dream of becoming an RD while staying at home and caring for my child. It’s not always easy to “go to class” while there’s a baby sitting in your lap but somehow I make it work.
After I complete the program I hope to be accepted to the internship program at MUSC here in Charleston. I would love to end up working with children either in a school setting or some type of community wellness program. I’m also interested in sports nutrition and clinical nutrition so we’ll see where the road takes me!
Hi, my name is Jordan Edmunds and I am from Manhattan, KS. Currently, I am a 20 year-old studying dietetics and started out my college career studying life sciences in the pre medicine program at K-State. After studying that for three semesters, I realized that I wasn’t very interested in the topic. On the other hand, at the same time, I was becoming more and more interested in fitness and nutrition. That’s when I started to look into dietetics, and soon after researching I decided that this was the right path for me. The best part is I could still help people in a clinical setting, but just (hopefully) not have to deal with the blood!
Since I switched my major only a year ago, I haven’t gotten into any of the typical dietetics classes that I look forward to taking soon. However, I was lucky enough to get a job as a nutrition assistant at Mercy Hospital where I am learning some basics about dietary needs of patients and also have amazing co-workers whom many are also studying dietetics. I also was a food microbiology research assistant last semester for K-State, which was a great experience for learning about the effects of different food bacteria. All-in-all I am looking forward to my experiences as an undergrad in dietetics and hope to do the DPD route, where my goal is to get an internship and experience life outside of Manhattan, KS.
Hello, my name is Adrienne Kahn, and I am a distance dietetics major. I am 41 and decided to go back to school after being laid off in 2010 from my 11 year career as a medical bill collector. I earned my first degree, a BS in Biology, in 1994 from Arcadia University. Unfortunately, I did not think to go to graduate school and floated around at boring clerical jobs for years.
For years I had thought that I would go back to school to become a nurse but things changed for me in February of 2006 when my youngest son was diagnosed with multiple food allergies. My youngest was diagnosed with allergies to diary, wheat, eggs and peanuts. The rug felt like it was pulled out from under me. What was I going to feed him? How was he going to get the fat he needed so his body and brain would grow? How was I going to get calcium into him to make sure his bones would grow? All of this went through my mind. My son’s allergist suggested we see a dietitian which we did. She gave me some great recommendations. While talking with her I began to think maybe this was the kind of thing I would love to do. Time passes and every so often I thought about it and looked into it but raising two kids had given me little time to take the leap.
Suddenly in 2010 I was told I was being laid off. I had five months to contemplate what to do before the layoff was completed. I began to look into going back to school to see if I could help other people in my position with children with food allergies. I began by looking at the ADA website for those schools that would allow for me to do distance learning and were approved by the ADA because I wanted to become an RD. I found three schools but K-state gave me the most the options to complete the entire degree online.
So three days after I was laid off I began my second college experience. This is totally different from my first college experience. I spent a year and a half unemployed going to school every day on my computer. I am now working full time again as a medical bill collector and currently looking for a job in the nutrition field most likely in my community, while raising my now 10 and 7 year old sons with my husband outside of Philadelphia. I have had several friends already asking me for information about diet and nutritional information; though I am nowhere near ready to give them any information of substance since I do not graduate until December 2014. I am excited about this industry because there are so many places to go with it. The wave of the future if preventative health and being a registered dietitian I will be able to help so many people.
My name is Jessica Sechrest and I am 23 years old. I started out my college career at Wichita State University in Wichita, Kansas and spent three and a half years in Elementary Education. When I realized that being a first grade teacher was not for me, I did some “soul searching” to see what I really wanted to do with my life. This is when I figured out that I wanted to go into Dietetics. Unfortunately for me, Wichita State did not have this major so I packed up and moved to Manhattan, KS. Before moving, I strongly considered going the distant route however; I am a very hands on type of girl so getting my education through a computer screen would not have turned out well. The reason why I chose this major is because I have always been very into nutrition and I have always wanted a career that could potentially change a person’s life.
Currently, I am working at the hospital here as a Nutrition Assistant. As an employee, I wash dishes, make the patients tray, deliver the trays, and answer phone calls when the patients call down to order. I have learned a lot doing this job and enjoy all of my co-workers. I also have the honor of holding an office in SDA as the liaison for the distance students. This is also the semester that I am applying for my internship and just like everyone else, I am nervous beyond belief. I am hoping to get my internship in Goddard, Kansas with the Director of school nutrition. Being a Director of school nutrition would be my absolute dream career. It combines all of my passion into one “big kid” job. It not only combines nutrition and the opportunity to be around children, it also entails foodservice experience and some education skills. I have been doing all that I can to receive the honor of an internship and have been praying every night that it is enough to be accepted into the internship. Thank you all for taking your time out of your day to read this. If you have any other questions about me or my future goals, feel free to e-mail me at sechrest@ksu.edu!
