Penn State Week 4

Week 4.. that can't be true, can it? Time is flying by here at Penn State and this week was just as fun and exciting as all the other weeks!

Monday - Our week started off with a tour of the HUB, a huge building on campus home to the Penn State Bookstore, conference rooms, and lounges. Since we're here for a foodservice internship, that's mainly the area of the HUB that our tour focused on - the food. We not only were treated to some delicious smoothies/juices as Jamba Juice, but we got to go behind-the-scenes to see how all the yummy drinks are made! As the tour continued, we got to go behind the scenes of other operations, such as McAllister's Deli, Burger King, Sbarro, etc. Before we headed off to our next adventure for the day, we stopped to grab some lunch in the food court that we had just finished up touring!

Going behind the scenes at Jamba Juice!

The HUB

Next stop: Findlay Dining Commons for our culinary training with Chef Mark. When we arrived there were four stations set up for us, and Chef taught us how to dice potatoes, tomatoes, bell peppers, squash, etc. After going through the basics of knife-handling he really put us to the test for our next task: creating a swan out of an apple. Now if you're anything like me, you're probably thinking to yourself, "how is that even possible?" or "won't that be hard?" Surprisingly, though, it wasn't all that challenging. It took a lot of concentration and paying close attention, but in the end I think we were all very pleased with the results. And none of us made any serious injuries to our swans, so that was good news!

Our beautiful apple swans!

After wrapping up our culinary training with Chef Mark, we walked over to Old Main, which is the beautiful building located right off the main street on campus, College Ave. As we walked through the building and got our tour, we were all in awe by the beauty of the building and all the small little details that added so much character. We were in for quite the treat because our tour included a trip up to the bell tower, which normally isn't open to the public. The stairwell up to the top was extremely steep and narrow, but we finally made it to the top and the view was incredible!

Old Main 

The view from the top

On top of Old Main

Tuesday - What better way to start the day off than with a photoshoot, right?! Well that's just what we did on Tuesday morning. We got all dressed up and headed over to the Arboretum, where the photographer was waiting to take our individual head-shots taken, along with several group photos. We had such a great time posing in all kinds of fun positions, even though our feet struggled a bit (the drawback of wearing high heels!)

After meeting members of the marketing department at Penn State, we grabbed a quick bite to eat before meeting up with Jeff Heim for some resume building. It was so beneficial for us to hear what to do or what not to do on our resumes - that advice will definitely come in handy in the near future when we all start looking for real jobs!
Next it was back to Redifer for a session with Marianne Howell on business etiquette. We learned all about how proper introductions, handshakes, table etiquette, and so on. Then we even took a quiz (luckily it wasn't graded!) to see how well we did. Here's a fun little trivia question for you: When you have food in your mouth that you don't want to swallow, what should you do? If you said "move the food forward with your tongue onto the fork and place it back on the side of your plate", then congrats... you're right! We were all shocked with that answer, but hey... you never know when that info may come in handy some day!

Wednesday - This morning began with a trip to the Penn State Bakery, which is currently undergoing a renovation. But that didn't stop us from getting a tour through the facility! Heather, our guide, showed us the ins and outs of the entire facility - whether it was the giant ovens where they cook Artisan breads, the temperature-regulated rooms where the store ingredients, or the cold rooms where they frost cakes and cupcakes. Not only was it neat to see how everything is made, but it smelled so good in there, and I just wanted to grab some of the freshly-baked banana breads and take them with me to go!

Look at those delicious, freshly-baked breads!

The fun doesn't stop there, though. Heather then took us to a large station in the bakery and brought out a dozen cupcakes for each of us, followed by frostings and an assortment of toppings we could pick from to decorate the cupcakes. We all had so much fun decorating the cupcakes, and our creative (and detail-oriented) sides definitely came out! An hour or so later, we left the bakery, armed and loaded with a dozen cupcakes each!

Hard at work!

We were all so proud of our hard-work!

The finished products

Since we had some spare time before our next sessions, we went back to the computer lab to complete another certification - this one was the GHS: Chemical Labeling and Classification. It was an extremely boring test to take, but luckily we all passed and were awarded some certificates to prove it!

To wrap up the day we met with Gary, who gave us a tour of a couple convenience stores (C-Stores) on campus. We started at The Mix (which is in Pollock Commons) and learned a little about purchasing before being able to walk through the kitchen space. Then we walked over to Redifer Commons to see their C-store: Louie's. This one was a bit different than the Mix, but it was still very similar. To cap off our tour, Gary let us choose a food item to take with us, so we all left as happy campers!

Check out Sarah's blog for updates on the second half of the week! :)