Final Week at University of North Dakota

What better time to write my last blog post than on my flight back to Connecticut!? (currently flying over Niagra Falls!) An hour left until I’m back home and it still hasn’t hit me that this awesome experience has ended!

I began my final week at UND by working with catering one last time. There was a “groundbreaking” ceremony at the college of geology, since construction is beginning on a new building there. The event was coordinated so that everyone could gather for snacks after the speeches were over. A smaller group of VIPs were also invited to eat lunch afterwards. Unfortunately the speeches went on for about an hour longer than anticipated (thank goodness I was not in the audience…) so a lot of people ended up not sticking around for snacks and coffee hour. We were a little disappointed by the scarce turnout, since we had worked so hard making everything look beautiful…There was so much food that ended up not being eaten! At least we were over prepared and not under prepared?

Set up from the coffee hour, complete with a macaron tree!

Watermelon & Feta bites

On Wednesday, Haley and I travelled down to Fargo with Dustin and two utilities workers—Mark and Mitch—to get a tour of the FSA (Food Services of America) Warehouse.  UND receives most of its food products from FSA, so there were many familiar items on the shelves. The warehouse itself was huge, busy, and very noisy. We had the chance to see where the trucks come in to unload products and what the process is for putting the items in their designated spot. Our least favorite part of the tour was the freezer (not surprisingly). Even with our fashionable bright orange jackets, it may have been a little hard for me to pay attention to manager showing us around while we were in this mini-tundra.

A glimpse of the warehouse

SO many bananas!!!

After we were done touring at the FSA warehouse, we headed over to the Hockenberg Foodservice Offices for lunch and to meet with Chuck, who is a broker and chef for the company. Chuck acts as a “middle man” between the large distributors (like what we just saw at FSA) and those operations looking to purchase products (like UND). Chuck’s job is to convince businesses to purchase whichever product he is hired to sell. He’s able to utilize his test kitchen to get a better feel for the product and suggest recipes or cooking techniques that may work well with the it. Chuck is definitely passionate about food, having works all sorts of different jobs in food service. For lunch, the guys had BLTs while Haley and I had roasted veggie and hummus sandwiches. For dessert, Chuck threw together a cheesecake with an apricot/sour cherry/lime topping. Everything was absolutely delicious!! I appreciated getting the chance to see exactly how food gets to us in the dining centers; I would have never guessed how long the process is to get food. I suppose it may have been ignorant of me to just assume the food appears in the dining hall straight from the company producing it, but it’s hard to imagine anything else! 

Dessert!

Since this was my final week of my internship, this was also our last week conducting our ServSafe study sessions. On Tuesday, we finished up the chapters we still needed to go over, and on Thursday, we concluded with a Jeopardy Review game! Things got very competitive between the two teams! Having the chance to help with study sessions for the Dining Services employees was a great opportunity to finish up my last few weeks at UND. Not only was it a useful food safety review for me, but it presented me with the unique challenge having to teach individuals who are older than me. Any experiences I have had in the past with tutoring or nutrition education have always involved very little kids, so this was new for me. Looking forward in my career, however, I am likely going to have to educate people older than me, which takes some getting used to.

My very last day as a NACUFS intern at UND was very similar to a “last day of school” back in elementary school (before finals existed). I had almost no work left to do! Dustin treated Haley and I to a celebratory lunch and we had our final evaluations. Since Haley and I seem to never stop thinking about or talking about food, we (again) treated ourselves to pizza later that night. I think it may have been the best pizza I have ever tasted…

Soooooo goooooooood

My time at University of North Dakota has definitely made this summer and memorable.  I learned so much during my time working with Dining Services and was able to expand my work experiences across multiple different areas. I got to spend time working in a kitchen again—which I am very appreciative of. I also had what felt like my first “grown up” job, where I got to dress nice and work at a desk some days (very glamorous). I met people not only from all over the country, but all over the world, and I made a few good friends along the way! It was definitely new for me to experience life in the Midwest—having never living outside of New England my entire life.  I can’t say that I ever picture myself living in a slow-paced small town like Grand Forks, but I enjoyed the change of pace this summer offered me! I owe so many thank yous to everyone at UND who made me feel welcome and helped make this experience worth-while!  Above everything else, this internship made me excited to continue school so I can start my career…I can’t wait to see what the future has in store for me!