College Experiences

[es2443]

Hey! I am writing an investigative article for my research class on students living on campus with food allergies. Basically I want to compare different colleges dining services and how the school accommodates you. I would like know what kind of meal plan you have and how your school's dining system works, how often you use your meals on a weekly basis, how you would rate the cafeteria help in making you meals if necessary and how well they accommodate you, and also if you do not eat at the school how much money do you think you spend per semester outside the meal plan. I would also like to know if you have a separate kitchen area or toaster, anything that a person with celiac would be interested in. I would really appreciate your help. Also, if you would be willing to share a story about a specific situation you have dealt with, such as confrontation with school administration/dining services, or a time when you just broke down crying because you had no options, anything really that will help make this article thorough.

Since I am asking you to share your experiences at college, I will share mine. I go to DeSales University in Center Valley, Pa. All on-campus students are required to have a meal plan, a choice of either a 5 day or 7 day plan. Basically, we get flex dollars and use that to buy breakfast and lunch, but the dinners are prepaid for either 5 or 7 days. Since my food options are somewhat limited, especially during the weekend I have the 5 day meal plan. This semester the head chef started to make a few students special gluten free meals, but they do have carved plain meat and potatoes often which I eat often. As of now, I use about 3 out of my 5 dinners a week, which means my parents are losing out on a decent amount of money. Part of this is due to my lack of talking to the chef more, which I have recently done, so this semester will hopefully get better. At this time our school does not have a separate toaster but a few of us store premade meals from home in the freezer. These come in handy when the head chef isn't there on the weekend. Overall, the school is willing to help more than some of the others I've heard.

I know there are many threads on college experiences, so I am sorry. I just need to keep my data organized. If you could help me, I would really appreciate it.

Thanks, Erin

[MySuicidalTurtle]

Which class are you doing this for? I do not live on my campus, so, I do not have to deal with eating there. However, I did go on a five week study abroad (through a USA university) to Spain and had to pay for a "meal plan" (this included 7 days of breakfast and 5 days of lunch and dinner) at the Colegio (where we lived and had classes) and ate there for most meals during the week. I do not know if that will help you. Just PM me and let me know.

[es2443]

I am writing this for my research in communication class. Initially I was going to investigate students just on my campus, but when I found out there werent many people with allergies I decided to compare it to other colleges. Also, if it was through a university any experience is fine. Also, for people who lived on campus previously and do not anymore your past experiences are fine as well.

[aggieceliac]

i'd be happy to help. i lived on campus the first year of diagnosis. an interesting experience. I've been living off campus for 2 years now. and will graduate this may. let me know what you need me to do.

[Tiffy]

Hi Erin, the topic that you have chosen for your paper is something that interests me a lot . I would be happy to help. I am a freshman at UCLA and I have been trying my best to be gluten free since school started. The meal plan that I have is two per day. There are several different residential restaurants, but most of them are all you care to eat. I found that eating gluten free at the dining halls is not that hard if I stick with the rice, fruits and vegetables. The only problem is that sometimes I feel like I am eating the same thing everyday, so I don't eat as much as a should especially since I lose weight very easily, but I try to eat some snacks through out the day. Usually I have rice or baked potato/french fries with vegetables and either cottage cheese, tofu or eggs. For breakfast I will get their fruit cups and eat it with my own yogurt that I keep in the fridge in my dorm room. The cooks are very helpful when I have a question about what is in their food. Just the other day they were serving spaghetti with meatballs. I thought that the meatball sauce would be safe to eat with white rice, but I asked just in case. Right away the cook went to go check the ingredients and found that there were bread crumbs in the meatballs. I was very thankful for his help otherwise I could have become very ill. Another nice thing is that the list of food that they will be serving for the whole week is listed on a website. They will have the nutritional info for all of the foods as well as the basic ingredients. It is kind of helpful, but I do not rely on it too much because they only give the basic list of ingredients. None of the dorm buildings have a kitchen. I feel that it is not fair because it kind of forces us to buy the meal plans. So I do not have that much trouble finding food that I enjoy at the dining halls and do go out sometime to the other restaurants on campus so I don't go insane. I do not mind eating gluten free because my health has been so much better ever since. I hope this information helps. I am also taking a communications class, I was just wondering how you will relate this to communications. If you have any questions about what I wrote please ask. Good Luck on your paper. I actually have one due in a couple of weeks as well!

-Tiffy

[whitney728]

I'm a junior at NYU, and I was in a traditional (no kitchen) dorm freshman year, so I was forced to be on a meal plan. While dining services said they would help me, they weren't always willing to accommodate me, so I wound up eating a lot of soup and frozen chicken nuggets from whole foods in my dorm room. I also got sick a lot when I attempted to venture to the dining hall, so I wasn't a big fan of doing that. Sophomore year, I moved to an apartment style dorm with a kitchen, went off the meal plan and began to cook for myself, so things got much better. Let me know if you have any further questions, as this is a subject I'm all too familiar with.

[Julianne Marie]

i go to michigan state university. and at first i tryed really hard to stay on my diet...but after awhile i got sick of eatting spinach salads every meal so i said screw it. i would have to say i hate eatting at the dorm cafeteria. i could watch what i eat better but if i do i end up being extremely hungry an hour after i eat because im not gettin the carbs that i need...which ends in me eatting a bunch of junk food in my room...then i gain more weight. i hate it...i hope this helps a lil...and if anyone has a any suggestions for me i would love them because i need to get back to not eatting gluten!