Tuesday, 1 November 2011

Me and the University of Essex: How a kitchen changed my life.

If you look at my humorous title, you may be thinking that I'm not taking university life all that seriously as instead of mentioning things that seem important in university life such as, my social life or my academic life I am actually talking about something that really shouldn't be changing my life, my kitchen. In all actuality, it has.

In the past few weeks the kitchen has been big subject in my university life. How in a space of three days two trolleys had made its way in. Before university I would have probably have been seething with rage and would have gotten emotional about it. Instead I joked about it and continued cooking as if nothing had ever happened, yes I was angry but I didn't show it, I just continued living my life around 'Troll' the Trolley and putting a grin on my face as if I hadn't a care in the world.

The kitchen is where food is made and before university I hardly ever cooked myself dinner, being Italian, my mum is the best cook that ever lived and nobody can take that fact away from me. With all the great food I was eating day in day out, I felt little need to actually cook dinner for myself. Nowadays I have to not only cook the food, I have to think if it's a good idea to have what I want it in the first place. When I'm at the supermarket I spend ages number crunching in my head working out what gives me the best deal for my stomach and my wallet and it is a very difficult thing to get right which I never had to do before. Unlike back home I don't have a constantly resupplied cupboard so I am no longer eating as if my life depended on it, to the extent that in the past few weeks I am noticeably much slimmer than when I started.

The one thing that has stayed constant from home to university is that the kitchen is a social space. At home the kitchen was home to three games consoles that I used with my brothers, and it was a great talking point as we are all interested in it and had something to say about what we were playing and talking about how terrible Call of Duty is. At university I have no games console and nobody is really that interested in talking about video games, so like everything else I've had to do I had to adapt. I now socialise by playing card games and talking about other things, listening to other people's stories that have happened in their lives.

The kitchen, despite it not really being that important in university life has been a focal point in my university life so far. It has been the scene to the many changes that have happened to me as a person and the events that have occurred in those four walls allowed me to adapt myself to the university environment far more than any other four walls on this campus.

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