A Week in the Life of a Culinary Student

I know, I know - you're probably like "What, you start culinary school and then disappear off the face of the planet?" All I can say is...take a look at what my weeks look like now!

Monday

Monday is one of my big work (I've started freelancing)/study days, since class doesn't start until 3pm. I usually wake up around 7, send Mountain Man off to work, and enjoy my coffee and eggs with some HGTV. Around 8:30, I get out my computer and work for about 4 hours. I usually make a light lunch and catch up on some homework while I eat. Since school is about 45 minutes away and parking is generally a mixed bag, I leave around 1:30 to give me plenty of time to get to class. Baking lab is 4 hours long, just long enough to give us some time to proof bread (in a fancy proofing machine) and get a quick lecture on different types of flour. I get home around 8, make a light dinner and spend some quality time with Mountain Man before going to bed early to get ready for Tuesday.

Tuesday

Tuesday is my toughest day. My Culinary Fundamentals lab starts at 7am, so I usually leave my house at 5:50 without showering but definitely with coffee! This is good experience for next semester, when I have to spend half of the semester on campus from 7 to 1 every day, so I don't mind too much. The lab is part demo and part hands-on work and it's generally very busy. So far we've learned two ways to cook chicken (roast and saute) as well as stir-fry and potstickers.

After lab, I usually head over to a cafe in town and study for 3 hours (last week, I studied foodborne illnesses for that length of time) and have about 4 cups of coffee. I then spend a couple of hours walking around Santa Barbara and running errands. My Sanitation lecture class is Tuesdays at 5, so I usually try to stay in town instead of spending time and gas driving back-and-forth. Sanitation is over at 7, and I head home, hope that Mountain Man surprises me with dinner, and crash relatively early.

Wednesday

Wednesday starts similarly to Monday - with a bit of work or studying. My Pantry lab is at noon, and parking is always difficult at this time, so I leave the house around 10:30. In case you were wondering, a class on "Pantry" is a class that covers salads, sandwiches, and egg dishes. Today we spent about an hour and a half trying to identify salad greens. Out of the 20 or so we were presented with, I got all of them except for one that not even my French chef-instructor (who grows his own food, composts, and is quite environmentally friendly) could recognize.

Lab is usually over by 3 or 3:30 so I head home and do a little work or homework. I am the interim choir director for our church choir, and rehearsals are Wednesday evenings, so I head over there around 6:30 (Mountain Man sings in the choir). At 9, I head home, we have a late dinner, and head to bed.

Thursday

Thursday is for work, homework, and errands. I don't have class, so I try to catch up on everyting else, including lunching with friends and doing some baking. Believe it or not, I don't sleep in on Thursdays - I usually have so much to do that I wake up and start working.

Friday

Lecture day. I have two lecture classes (Culinary Fundamentals and Intro to the Food Profession) from 11-4 with a break in between. My new friends and I go to the student-run cafe on campus for lunch (where we'll be working in our 3rd semesters). The lectures are both huge classes, with everyone who's in first semester (about 75 students) and the teachers do their best to make them interesting and interactive, but it's hard on a Friday afternoon! Needless to say, we usually get out early. I head home around 4, and the weekend begins!

Saturday and Sunday

We've been busy the past few weekends, but have talked about trying not to book ourselves solid over the weekends. Part of that is just to spend some quality time together doing something fun, but it's also time for me to cook and practice what I'm learning and to work on recipes for the future. We've actually set aside a weekend in March to just have our families over for dinner and do nothing else except what we want to do in and around the house. I can't wait!


So that's why you haven't heard from me in a wile, but I'll be back. The first few weeks were difficult, just trying to get into a groove that worked, and I was actually pretty exhausted for the first few weeks. But this week was great, and I still have plenty of energy for the rest of the week, so it seems that I've got it figured out!