DS has applied to a "no cooking" university. He loves cooking. This is madness, isn't it?

[Thesearepearls]

Just that really. DS's first choice university (we've just done the application for halls) is a no-cooking university. The cooking facilities comprise a toaster, kettle and microwave. There is no cooking allowed for the entirety of his university course.

If you'd asked me what DS would do in a future life I would have given you two choices. The first is singing (he was a cathedral chorister and loves classical music). The second is that he would be a chef. He is absolutely gutted that he won't be able to cook. He cooks for us all the time. He's really keen on it and he is beyond disappointed that the next three years of his academic career will involve zero cooking.

It's total madness isn't it?

Ridiculous thread, although I take the point that when you're nervous about any big change, it's easy to get fixated on a minor point.

On the bright side, now is his chance to experiment with fermented food. My homemade kimchi has made me very unpopular in my office. It has explosive qualities.

I love to cook, and in my time the only cooking equipment in halls was a kettle and all of our rooms were only 5AMP circuits so you could not plug in anything without blowing the circuit, plus we were charged on a coin meter ridiculous amounts for any electric beyond lighting. Our fridges were Cartier bags hung out of windows.
University is such a short time it passes so quick that I cooked a lot in the holidays and didn't miss it during term time and I was on a six year courses.
I have friend who is an excellent chef awards a plenty, but his is a very hard life very long anti-social hours. He would encourage anyone with another skill to use that to earn a living and have food as your passion outside work.

I adore cooking it is my hobby I love to try new things and techniques. My skill earns me a really good living that enables me to indulge my passion.

Of all the first world problems I have seen discussed on MN I think this one tales the biscuit.

Sorry.

Considering how hard undergraduates at Oxbridge have to work, I would be delighted to that my child was fed, frankly.

you make it sound like an Oxbridge place isn't a big deal. It is. It's huge and life changing.

It's not really life changing get real. Having a heart transplant is life-changing. Winning a million on the lottery is life changing. Having kids is life changing. An academic kid going to Cambridge I'd regard as a great achievement, but realistically probably not one that will seriously change his life - unless it's 1970 and he wants to become a spy, or an MP..... If he wants an academic career - another high grade university would facilitate the same.

And plenty of Oxbridge students end up with quite severe MH issues. So I guess for them, yes possibly life changing. But not in a good way.

If there is a plug socket he can use a slow cooker and a steamer so quite a lot of things can be cooked.

BUT OP

There are community cafes, AP lunch clubs, food bank cafes all would welcome a volunteer who cooks.

Does he have a car? Before my grandmother went into a care home she had carers at home including one who came to cook an evening meal, he could make some (small small amount of) money.

He could also do cooking for dinner parties (lots of potential in Oxbridge towns) or for new parents.

Our fridges were Cartier bags hung out of windows.

You were in the Sloaniest hall then?

(sorry)

Annoying for your DS if he's a keen cook, but if cooking was such a deal breaker for him then he should have researched college accommodation more thoroughly before applying and applied to one of the various colleges that do supply basic kitchens and cooking facilities. Students always find something to grumble about and tbh he's bloody lucky if the worst he encounters in his years as a student is not being able to make a moussaka for 8 weeks at a time. I feel more for the students who can't live in (subsidised) college accommodation throughout their degree, eating (subsidised) college food, who end up living in a lethally expensive dump of a student flat hours away from lectures, prey to an exploitative "student lets" industry. If his flatmates were anything like your average students then your DS would probably discover pretty quickly that re-enacting Gordon Ramsay is difficult to do in a cramped, dirty kitchen shared with 5 other students who've taken up all the space in the (tiny) communal fridge with beer and pizza boxes.

You just buy smaller amounts of ingredients and cook them as soon as you get in, so you don't need to use the fridge space, and offer what you can't eat to other flatmates. (Although they won't necessarily pay you back for it.)

Maybe he can ask to help out in the dining room/kitchen.

Certainly the Colleges in Oxford provide three home made cooked meals a day, so he won't go hungry, but I am certain student involvement in the kitchens would be as encouraged as it is in many of the Colleges here.

Tell him to approach the dining room team/kitchen and ask!

I had a plug in toastie maker

we spent hours talking about cinnamon

Maybe no cooking facilities will be a good thing for him.

I'm a bit concerned about a Natsci student who has to spend ages working out why mousakka (lamb, aubergine and potato) tastes different to spag bol (beef).

He will be glad of the catering I think when he has exams to revise for and coursework due in and 9-5 lectures, I didn't go to Cambridge but stayed at a friend's once and the food was actually really good and I was jealous. I did do a v. Intensive (+much longer terms) course and spent about 4 weeks at the end of each term living off ready meals because I was too busy working to cook.

He can get a job in the holidays in a kitchen if he really wants, or volunteer at a soup kitchen as a PP suggested. He has 28 weeks a year he can do these things I think he will cope. He can always live out 2nd year in a house or perhaps private halls, the university can't and won't stop him. The uni don't stop then cooking they just don't provide cooking facilities. And he can still make scrambled egg in the microwave. Is it perhaps one of the microwave that is also a grill/oven? In which case just get him a slow cooker and he is sorted.

If it really means that much he can always go through clearing to a different uni, or take a year out and reaaply for a different uni next year, if he can get into Natsci at Cambridge he must be looking at good grades so I pretty much everywhere else would take him. Unless of course it really isn't that big of a deal.

ShumbaLumba my exact thoughts

Even he is isn't allowed a paid position surely he'd still be allowed to volunteer somewhere like a soup kitchen where he'd be able to put his passion to good use

Not sure why everyone is trying to provide the OP with ways in which her son can get his cooking 'fix'. That doesn't seem to be what she is asking. She seems to be asking whether it is reasonable that some of the colleges have no cooking facilities. The answer is, it may be annoying, but given the space constraints and the age of the buildings, yes, it seems reasonable. She needs to advise her DS to suck it up or go elsewhere.

It is an essential life skill ffs!

Not if your meals were prepared by cook until you went to your boarding prep, then Eton and after uni you expect to employ a cook.

Er... maybe come back when he's there and moan about the actual facilities, instead of getting your knickers in a twist because he's theoretically prevented from exercising his human rights to scramble an egg? FWIW, there were plenty of ovens in my Cambridge halls which were still there when I went back for a reunion 3 years ago and most of my friends cooked their own meals. It's where I learned to make risotto, curry and many variants on baked potatoes.

Tell him to approach the dining room team/kitchen and ask!
Really don't do this though.

This is partly hilarious, but partly infuriating. Just imagine what aspiring teens or parents with no Oxbridge experience must be thinking while reading this thread. So depressing and offputting.

And nonsense too. I was in a newish college decades ago - with perfectly adequate shared kitchens on each staircase. Could otherwise choose formal hall or the canteen. And I moved out of college in the third year. Never ever had a problem with cooking facilities. (I vaguely remember rules about paying for catering - but definitely no frog marching to a designated and unavoidable eating venue. You were perfectly free to do exactly as you chose.)

(And for the person who mentioned it - having bedders to clean rooms and launder bedding really doesn’t make one entitled or spoilt or incapable of managing in the outside world. I’m sure it would have been possible for the college to arrange the hiring or personal ownership of vacuum cleaners and washing machines - but it really wasn’t necessary. And would have been a bit of a nuisance, frankly.)

I think he needs to take a year out.The OP didnt say why he was getting cold feet about going to uni which is a bigger problem than cooking.

Short terms so ample opportunity to cook when not there. Plus the eating in hall is one of the best memories I have of Cambridge - not because of the quality of the food but because it was so sociable - importance of a shared meal and all that.

"suck it up or go elsewhere"

As ops son will soon find out, university students do not have the MN attitude of 'rules are rules'!!! Lack of cooking facilities and compulsory college meals are but one of the hosts of petty rules and irritations he will encounter. Creative approaches to these problems will be all part of the fun Having said that, if it's the college I'm thinking of, students were balloted once and were not in favour of making college meals optional, as the idea was to keep meals as a way of binding the student community together. It's all too possible to get very isolated, especially with a heavy workload. In practice, if most of his friends eat in college, that's the best thing for him as well.

I think op you are fixating on a minor non-issue as it's less scary than all the bigger worries of having kids at uni.

As for it not being a life-changing experience, I'd beg to differ. I can barely put into words how life-changing, in fact. Maybe if you come from Eton it isn't. If you are from an average comp, it is a window into a totally different world, and the education you get tends to confer lifelong advantages and self-confidence. It's a baptism of fire, but by God it's worth it.

frogsoup but the OP (and apparently her son) aren't interested in finding ways round it. He wants a full kitchen. The fact that it hasn't got that is making him rethink his life plans. He is miserable and no longer want a to go. He doesn't want to make use of what's available or work round it.

It's a ridiculous situation. That leaves him with 'suck it up or don't go

There are clearly deeper issues to explore then, it doesn't take a psychoanalyst to see that the cooking is a useful fixation covering up deeper fears. As a parent the op should be trying to tease these out, not reinforce him in the lunacy of not taking up a place at the top uni in the country because he can't bear to not have a proper kitchen for short periods of time. I'd agree that maybe he needs to go to catering college at some point if the interest is that strong, but for the love of God, try Cambridge out for size first.

frogsoup

Nothing to do with 'rules are rules'. There is no hob. There is no oven. He will have to do without. Plus, if he takes his own and it is spotted in an inspection, it will be removed. Serious fire risk.