Now
that the course is over, the glamour is gone and I can gripe about some of the
things that irritate me in hindsight. I still love it and I'm going to do it,
but I think there should be some changes to help out new students that are
especially new to this college thing!
- Getting out early but my tuition bill is the same.
After
the first few classes, we got out early almost every week. And it wasn't like a
few minutes, some was more than 2.5 hours! Yet, I still paid the fool
eight-hundred-and-something dollars out of pocket. I feel like if you can't
fill the whole long day, cut the credit hours.
- Constant stains on white jackets.
Okay,
this is more my fault. I guess chef coats are white to reflect the heat and
yada yada, but come on! We only had waist aprons… I needed one for the top too.
For a custom jacket that was a little pricey, I want some protection. I feel
like every semester I'm going to have to purchase a new one. Sometimes it was
my carelessness, but when mysterious stains started showing up, I knew that
some things around the kitchen were coated in something designed to make me
look bad!
- Know-It-Alls were legion.
If
you are not my professor, I do NOT, repeat do NOT need you to come over and
check my stock. Go away! When you're over here being nosey all in my grilled
and the chef is calling to you telling you your stuff is messed up, you need to
check yourself bro! Okay, that was one guy. The next guy would just tell me
things that I didn't ask nor want to know. Yay, you used to work somewhere
where they cooked this differently… sorry but we are doing Classical French
cooking and your method is Disillusioned American. I repeat: GO AWAY! I
wouldn't be upset with these people if it was a one-time occasional thing, but
it happened every class to both me and my girls. Also watch out for the
'know-it-none's'. These people did not retain any information and kept the class
slow and constantly asked for answers even in the last few weeks. It's like
they didn't even try. One even whined and accused the chef of picking on her
when she claimed that a mixture can be 60/60 and he asked her to show where in
the world possible that can happen. Sigh…
- The supply list was a lie.
Ok,
not really but come on! I shouldn't have to be scrambling to purchase things
for the next week when you suddenly decide we should all have something. That
expensive of a facility should have enough wooden spoons and scrapers for us
all. Or you could just, you know, figured out it was needed from the prior
classes and put it on the supply list. Thank goodness my mom had some 'mesh'
that suddenly became required to put underneath our cutting boards!
- We had two chefs overall, both with different directions.
I
spoke about this in my previous posts. There was Chef Loving and Master Chef
Gabriel. It looked as if Chef Loving commanded the most respect, but everyone
wanted so bad for it to be that the Master Chef always knew what he was doing.
It usually turned out that Chef Loving's methods were the best and not only was
that a bit odd, it left the class confused as to who wanted what on the exam.
- There wasn't enough time set aside to do everything we were supposed to.
Maybe
this was just my opinion, but it seemed like we were supposed to learn a little
more. The beginning was focused on knife cuts, but it became almost the focus
of the entire course. Though I'm grateful for that, I wish we had enough time
to make ALL of the mother sauces, make some brown stock, spend more time on
fresh herbs and dry spices, and see the uses of all of the equipment.
Everything else seemed like such an afterthought.
- My group never got enough feedback.
It's
true that my group did a good job of working together and were usually
successful at our attempts, but I wish the chefs and the assistants came over
to us more and critiqued more. Sometimes we all got to walk up to show our
work, but they paid more attention to others during our cooking process. I
guess that means that they trusted us, but still, it would have been nice.
- There wasn't any real structure, just an illusion.
Not
to say the course was unorganized, but we surely did not follow the syllabus.
While I'm grateful we got to work more on things the class as a whole was bad
at, I still feel like there were other things we needed to strengthen. We never
knew which chef we were going to get and I really was disappointed when we
didn't actually make that bread.
- I felt like the homework was a waste.
It
was cool that we had little quizzes or whatever, but it just seemed like busy
work. There were right and wrong answers and that's it. Nothing to make us
reflect, nothing to fill in our opinions on anything. I felt like it didn't
even need to be there. We should have just been given a chapter to read and
discussed it the next week. To make it worse, a completely different chef was
in charge of the homework and it felt like a detachment from the rest of the
course.
- They overreacted on the ability to catch up.
I
was really nervous because the attendance policy and syllabus let you know that
it was near-impossible to catch up or make anything up if you miss anything. I
call bull on that. Mainly because a lot of things were repeats. It may have
hurt to miss a demo, but some of the things were simple to learn and practice
on your own if you needed it. I really thing that girl should not have had to
drop if she missed the first course because we basically learned it all again,
plus it was in the book. I can see missing the time where we had to use stock
from the previou- oh wait, the stock spoiled anyway so we had to remake it. I
could really see missing one of the last few weeks when we practiced the timed
exam and learned the herbs and sp- oh wait they tricked us and used other herbs
and spices that we didn't learn about at all. See where I'm going here? If
someone is dedicated, they will get the work done. If they want to continue and
they end up failing out, let it be their choice.
Don't
worry, I'm not here to complain. Even with all it's faults, I absolutely love
this program and the chefs were amazing! I just wanted you to realize that
everything that glimmers is not gold. Go into what you want with an open mind
and the faults will be nothing to you. Schoolcraft College really is one of the
best out there. I'm going to let you in on a secret. I took half of a culinary
course at Lansing Community College before they shut the program down and I had
to drop because they tricked me on financial aid. In that course, all we did
was attend class, he would hand out various recipes, we would cook them either
alone or in groups, and at the end of the night we all sat down for family
dinner and ate it. We critiqued. We cleaned up. We went home.
I
can do that ish at home.
With Love,
Cookie
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