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?

When I applied to Cambridge I didn't look into cooking at my college because I, quite reasonably in my view, assumed that if I waslivingsomewhere I would be able tocookthere

But if it was going to make or break your decision, or make you miserable to not have them, you would check.

If cooking was such a large part of your life that you can't go without, you would check it out.

Which is why I suspect this is a big deal to the OP, not her son.

The OP's ds will be cooking for the rest of his life. A few terms of eating in a dining hall (being served as well) is a privilege.

I wish I could turn up to a dining hall in the evening and find a meal presented to me. The thrill of cooking your own food wears a bit thin after a few decades!

Ds enjoys his college meals very much (but then he's one of those state-school plebs which the OP despises...) and the chef is very inventive and takes a pride in his menus.

How about adventuring with sous vide cooking using the kettle - it could be a very interesting experiment, or failing that how about an instant pot, we’ve been impressed with ours so far.

How about a slow cooker?

Will he be in halls for all three years? Seems unlikely to me. Most students aren't allowed to for a start but generally they like the idea of house share after a while. So I wouldn't worry. When he comes home he can cook for you.

Some of the Cambridge colleges do have them living in halls all three years and they have very tight regs on how far out you can live from the town centre. Technically they only allow them to have kettles in their rooms. In some of the older colleges, given the fire risk, that seems sensible.

I've just bought a microwave meals in a mug cookbook

In some of the older colleges, given the fire risk, that seems sensible.

Indeed. Tiny, labyrinthian corridors, attic rooms, no fire escapes, pissed up students trying to make fry-ups at 1am after the college bar is a recipe for disaster. It's a shame to see some people on here encouraging 'creative rule-breaking' to show off how clever they are. An 18 year old doesn't look so clever being carried out of a building in a zipped bag.

Oh ffs. Was there any need for that? I was pointing out that where there's a will there's a way, given the op I was thinking more 5-hour sous-vide salmon than drunken 1am fry-ups. But no, on here, if you suggest not following every rule to the nth degree someone will always pop up with some variation on 'you must clearly be showing off your cleverness' (?!) and advocating students emerging from halls in body bags. It's such a predictable straw man. There are actually positions between two extremes, you know that?

(The two fires I know of in college were started by a hairdryer and a curling iron, not illegal cooking facilities, but hey, why let facts get in the way of a snide dig.)

frogsoup

The regulations are there to prevent students dying in fires, frog. 'Where there's a will there's a way' isn't responsible advice. Yes, kids will be kids, but you're not one.

Didn’t he spot the lack of kitchens at open day/interviews?

I went to a college where there wasn’t even a shared fridge. We got inventive with the toastie maker instead. Vast numbers of midnight fire alarms due to pissed toast making, spent hours standing in the street in pjs waiting for the fire brigade. Always good fun spotting the people who shouldn’t have been there

Some regulations are wise, some are ludicrous. Students at Cambridge are mostly clever enough to know the difference, and where they can't, unfortunately no regulation is going to help. I'm not 'advising' anything, I'm saying what the reality of living in college looks like.

Thinking colleges know best about fire security is also quite ironic. We might not have been allowed toasters, but nobody seemed to care about the lethal open bar heaters that were provided to us as our only source of heating. Colleges are fiefdoms, and the origin of most rules is lost in the mists of time and the peculiarities of a given domestic bursar.

Though actually, remembering, even the domestic bursar turned a blind eye to the toasters.

pmsl at this thread

get him some pop tarts and super noodles

bosh

Frogsoup - lethal bar heaters and a dodgy armchair that could only be placed next to the heater - that was my 2nd year room in a firetrap building

You may be relieved to know that:

He can cook at home during holiday periods

He may make friends who have kitchens in which he can cook

He has the whole of the rest of his life to cook

My fire escape involved battering down a wooden panel and crawling through a tunnel in the loftspace to the next corridor mojito! It was a deathtrap. There were clearly other options they could have provided (window escapes for instance) but college didn't want to bear the cost Stiff letter to the college got a reply not far off 'we are 700 years old so we do what the hell we please'

Students at Cambridge are mostly clever enough to know the difference

Then I must have moved in some particularly thick circles when I was there, relatively speaking.

The fire exit from my third year rooms was through the back of a wardrobe...

@viques ... hope that's a home baked biscuit :D

Well if the OPs son is busy discussing the relative merits of spices in meat sauce, I'm going to make the radical assumption that he knows his arse from his elbow when it comes to cooking safely (as opposed to a pissed boatie whose highest culinary achievement before college is heating a can of baked beans). If so inclined, i suspect he is probably creative enough to come up with within-college-rules (or at least within striking distance) options for cooking. I'd challenge anyone to burn down college using a sous-vide heater keeping a bowl of water at a steady 65 degrees.

But really this is almost certainly not really about the cooking. It's too ludicrous. The 'im scared I didn't make my offer' scenario is quite plausible.

This thread has taken a comforting twist

I think we are all talking about the dark ages, relatively speaking! I doubt any colleges still have bar electric heaters (or heated lightbulbs in the loos to stop the water freezing!!). It's all ensuite luxury nowadays for the spoilt buggers

Can he use an instant pot or slow cooker? It’s amazing what you can make in those.

I had hidden this thread, because really, it wasn't sensible to stay in view of some of the (pretty horrific) comments being made.

1. I am not a Daily Mail journalist. I'm a mostly harmless accountant.
2. DS will take up his offer - taking up or not taking up his offer was not the point of the thread. It's just he likes cooking and was disappointed to find that he could not cook. It is a very unusual situation that a university does not offer so much as a baby Belling to cook on. Nor in fact do I think this is a sensible situation. Cooking is a lifeskill.
3. Neither DS nor I anticipated that he would not be able to cook and therefore this was a bit of a surprise. If DS knew that some colleges had cookers and others not then I suppose he would have made a different choice. But it's not something you would normally check.
4. DS isn't worried about making the grades. The offer is in context soft. He's worried about going. If I dig down into the insecurity (which as many posters have pointed out is the main issue) I think he is worried about lots of stuff. He's a level-headed boy generally but I think he is worried about whether or not he's good enough and he will miss his friends/girlfriend and the cooking just became the focus of the worry. As OYBBK pointed out.
5. I have been very robust in being encouraging and supportive of his university choice and I have never shown him any doubts but just tried to be a reassuring and calm presence. He's the one person in the family I don't worry about! He's not picking up on my anxiety - I'm picking up on his.
6. The whole stealth boast thing is hurtful TBH. The point of the thread that is not a particularly reasonable situation for university age kids not to be able to cook. I didn't want to name the university but I got forced into it and now it's some kind of stealth boast? I've been perfectly open about where both DCs are/are applying to throughout my time on MN.

It kind of feels like you can't avoid being jeered at. "oh no it can't happen this is ridiculous it never happens, name the university, if you don't name the university you're making it up" so I named the university and then a different sort of jeering happened "massive stealth boast" "inventive stealth boast" "whole point of the thread is a stealth boast".

Well this is AIBU I suppose. But it's still ridiculous that a child can go to a university that has no cooking facilities. Formal halls are twice a week the rest of the time is spent eating in a canteen effectively.

I'm hiding the thread from this point onwards and you can jeer at me/my DS in peace. Thanks for all the useful comments btw - I do plan to make use of your suggestions :)

I know you won't see this OP but I can't help myself - people have said time and time again that Cambridge is not a no-cooking university! Your son's college, perhaps. But not the university as a whole!