Category: Daily Living
So, recently I got accepted into the 4-year university of my choice (up until now I was in a community college). This means I'll be moving from living on my own to living on-campus and I'm super excited! However, this also means some things will be changing. I'm used to cooking all my meals for myself but when I move on campus I'll be eating in the dining halls. I'm not really sure how that works and was just wondering if anyones had experience with dining halls at a university? How did you go about getting food? Obviously I'll be exploring my own university when I get there just wondering generally how other completely blind people go about doing this.
Thanks,
Dan.
This will depend on whether your campus does a sort of caf-style setup or not. If it's caf-style like my high school was, you get up to the window, ask what they have (or they'll tell you if not) and you make your choice. Then you push your tray along the rails till you hit the cash, pay/use your student card, and go find a table.
Not sure what other setups they use, honestly.
If your school has different stations which mine does, you can learn it, or get help if needed. They have to provide you with assistance.
My school has a few different options. We've got the caf-style place, we've got another dining hall that does a buffet, we have two food courts (which are pretty self-explanatory), and we have an actual sit-down restaurant where waiters take your order and bring your food to your table. And then, of course, we have a few POD's where you can buy complete, pre-prepared meals. As for navigating, that depends on your comfort level, as well as how they're set up. One of our food courts is a colossal pain in the ass to walk through without sight, especially when it's super-crowded. The other one's not so bad. It just depends.
Becky
Yeah, I pretty much know my way around my cafeteria, but it's still helpful having someone help navigate the obstacle of it. My food court is pretty easy, but I dunno, I'm just fortunate to have the people help me get whatever it is I want. As for the other food items on campus, I pretty much know where those are, so it all just depends. You will have to explore it once you're there.
I know that some of this advice seems a little vague and "just do it"-like but they are all correct. Navigating a dining hall is not as difficult as you would think. I do recommend labeling the juice/soda dispensers if you get up multiple times to refill your drink like I do :) I also recommend going when it's not so crowded if that is possible/desireable for you. It's less noisy and confusing to learn it that way.
After you go and try it out (either on your own or with a friend) you can decide if you need assistance and when that is necessary. Good luck and feel free to PM me with any questions.
It does depend on what type of set-up your school has, which largely depends on the size of the college. Mine was a pretty small college, and so their cafeteria had a buffet-type line that you went through. I'd have the workers behind the counter tell me what options were at each place, make my choices, and they put the food on the plate/tray. But they served the food up for every student, not just me, so it wasn't a blindness thing. I had been taught how to cary a tray and still use my cane, so I was then able to pick my tray up and find a table. As I got to know people, a lot of times I was with friends during this process, so they could guide me verbally as I walked to the table. In the beginning as I learned the process and cafeteria, the staff assisted me. In bigger set-ups it may be more complicated than that. But it is staff's job to assist you if you need it, and I think eventually you'll be able to get to where you can do it without said assistance.
thanks for all the responses. I do know that the dining hall that I'll be most frequently at is a buffet type caf. It opens up today so we'll see how busy or hard it is to learn. I do know that my university is upwards of 37000 students so there's quite a bit of people running around campus!
Thanks again for all the advice/well-wishes...heres to hoping I won't die!!!! :p
Damn, and I thought my uni had a lot of people at about 27000! lol. Good luck!
Becky
Damn, 37 thousand? My school doesn't have no where near as many people...
It's actually quite nice because there's so many people you can meat... But yeah, it's gonna suck when everyone gets here when classes start (Tuesday).
As a follow-up to the op, I've figured out that if I just walk in and ask for assistance from the helpers around the kitchen, they'll "be glad to help". For now, this is what I'll do but I'm sure I'll eventually figure out a way to do this without having to bother someone else.
oh wow, that's a lot of people. It is cool to have options of meeting new people though, and in my experience that makes for a lot of people that are willing to help out even when you don't really need it lol. But the only thing that I can add is that experience will tell you the best method of getting food, trust me hunger is a motivator.