In Tuesday's Banquet class, we had great fun dissecting the previous night's ACF event and the other schools' booths. The classmates that did not attend did seem to be amazed that the Expensive Art College's display was so, so, so, blah. Chef Banquet made some comment to the effect that no self-respecting chef would throw out "just raw veggies," at a chef-oriented event. Someone else mentioned that Expensive Art College's tuition was extremely expensive, so I pointed out my Porsche statistic, and the masses were dutifully impressed. Well, not really that impressed, but it did cause much laughter, so that's good, too.
It was admin day in class, and Chef passed out the course syllabus, calendar, and a new requirement for volunteer service. Yippee. It seems that Fine Technical College is participating a national community college effort to encourage a sense of community by requiring students to participate in 1 volunteer event per quarter. This is all fine, well, and good, and I am in no way knocking the very worthy cause of volunteerism, but the kicker is that we can't count it towards our program-required indentured servitude(okay, it's proper name is service points, but I'm really feeling like part of a press gang!).
You have to have at least 25 volunteer hours at some sort of Head Chef-blessed culinary event to graduate from the culinary program, and they want to pile more on top of that? (Plus, it's been rumored that the required number of volunteer hours is going to rise.) What about the folks who work full time and go to school and are taking a full class load? When the hell are they supposed to sleep, much less do their homework? And, it's required that you get some kind of job in the industry to graduate as well, so they're really in a lose-lose situation. I'm kind of in a bind myself this quarter, because I can only work Fridays and Saturdays because of my school schedule, and a lot of these events take place on Fridays and Saturdays. Should I be expected to give up income that I really need to do these events?
Plus, we've talked to a few folks who are repeating the class about the major project that is coming up, and which we still haven't officially received details about. We have to do a notebook that contains a catered event for 750 people to include recipes, plating diagrams, venue layouts, food/beverage requisitions, equipment requisitions, travel plans, etc. And, the due date is somewhere around the time we start service in the dining room, which the Banquet class is responsible for serving the food. Who knows what projects await in the Pantry class to go along with this. I'm going to be living in Project Hell.
I've been seriously thinking about dropping this class and only taking Pantry this quarter. I'm not really comfortable with the class and the load requirements, and
it's beginning to impact what little confidence I had going into the class. Maybe I'm just a big wuss, or a chicken or just lazier than hell, but I can't help feeling that this career change was supposed to be more enjoyable than it's turning out. Whine, whine, whine...Cluck, cluck, cluck. Where the hell is that damn golden egg when you need it? Oh, yeah, that was a goose, wasn't it?
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