Summer 2013... NACUFS Intern Style!: University of Oklahoma Week 4 !

Week 4

This weekend was PERFECT! My parents and younger brother drove down and see me for my birthday, and meet Nova! J It was so fun to just relax and eat at some really cool local places, including Crooked Crust pizza, which I LOVED!

Monday

This morning Nova and I met with Nancy, Frank Henry’s assistant. Nancy does a little bit of everything, but it is mainly an administrative role that deals with all the meal plans on campus: both student and employee. Freshman are the only class that are required to have a meal plan, but most of the students who live on campus have one because there is no cooking allowed in the dorms. She uses a program called Blackboard that keeps track of who has what meal plan and how often they use their meals. The coolest thing about the meal plans is that students can change theirs within the first 3 or so weeks of the semester. I think this is so great because a lot of freshman have no idea what sort of meal plan will fit with their schedule, so they may get a huge plan that they do not need. This way, they have time to feel it out and change it if necessary. Nancy also does all of the financial reporting for Frank Henry to make his job as easy-breezy as possible. She handles an insane amount of paperwork throughout a typical day, and I mean dead-forests-thank-goodness-for-recycling type of paperwork. We only saw a minute fraction of what she manages, and it was crazy! Nancy is such a happy and passionate person about her job that I really enjoyed learning about it, even though I do not think I could ever keep track of so much stuff! Not only that, but she was super informative and it was really nice talking to her. J Unfortunately, my day ended on a sour note with a hate-crime (mind you: this is only a speculation). Nova and I walked outside to ride our classy bikes home and alas, my tire was ENTIRELY flat! I tried to air it up, but it was no good. Manny (my bike) just couldn't take it! We decided that Lola was not completely up to the challenge of carrying us both, so we walked. It was a long walk. We are spoiled. Hopefully Luise can help a girl out and find me another bike to ride.

You can't really tell, but that
tire is completely flat.. =(

Tuesday

Today was a fun day! We spend the morning learning about Quiznos, The Laughing Tomato, and Chic-fil-A. TJ is the manager of all three of these operations, and she is one of the most smiley and relaxed managers that I have come across. She loves her employees and realizes that when she makes a fun work environment they will complete their jobs with a much better attitude. TJ’s assistant manager, Windon, showed us around the Union Marker (formerly known as Wendy’s). The Union Market is under construction and is not scheduled to open until maybe January. The managers are still discussing what exactly will be served there, but they have a general idea of the anticipated layout. I think they are aiming more towards home-style cooking as well as meal replacements. Windon passed us on to Arielle, the supervisor at Quizons. Because Quiznos and Chic-fil-A are franchises, they must be run very differently than any of the university’s dining areas. The main difference between is the rules. To work in Quiznos or Chic-fil-A, you must adhere to very strict, specific rules about what is served and how it must be served. I think it would make everything a bit simpler because you never have to wonder how everything is supposed to go, but it also squashes your menu-creativity. TJ has an excellent work-outlook. She realizes that teamwork is a big job, and her staff knows it as well. She also does a lot of work cross-training her staff so than if Quiznos, for example, is slow and the Laughing Tomato is getting smashed, Quiznos workers can run over to the Laughing Tomato and help out without being told what to do. She seems like an awesome manager!

The Laughing Tomato an OU-originated restaurant. Everything in it is as fresh as possible, it’s so cool! They even make their own pita chips, which are a hit among the students and staff. The pitas actually come from a bakery in Oklahoma City, the peanut butter (which everyone also loves) is made locally, and even the honey in the honey peanut butter comes from a local bee farm! It’s my kind of restaurant!

To top it off, I got a new bike today! Minkus (new bike) is an oldie…classy, but old. He doesn’t even have hand breaks. But I am not one to complain; it beats walking, that is for sure!

Minkus has the blue bike lock :)

Wednesday

No offense to the housing & food department, but today is the day that I was looking forward to the most because we FINALLY met the dietitian! (Yes, this is dietetics bias) Maggie Pool is the Assistant Director of Health Promotions & Clinical Services, and she is extremely nice! She introduced us to Mary, the campus part-time dietitian and Nicole who is in charge of campus health promotion. Mary is working on a new program called DISH with the Dietitian. It is a little presentation each month about various health topics. Today was her first presentation called Smart Snacking: Summer Salsa. Nova and I got to help her make a Cucumber & Tomato salsa and a Mango-Avocado salsa. She also made a traditional red salsa and a Bean & Corn salsa. They were all delicious! My absolute favorite was the Mango-Avocado salsa (I have an extreme avocado weakness). The presentation was geared towards faculty & staff since there are hardly any students on campus at the moment. The staff had some really great questions, and it was cool to hear Mary answer them in relatable terms (and to notice that I actually knew some of the answers!J). Next month’s topic is Simple Summer Desserts, which I am super excited about because I have an uncontrollable sweet tooth, and it’s always great knowing a few “healthy” dessert recipes. After lunch, Maggie set us free to look up some possible recipes for the next month’s demonstration. It was fun to find some original recipes and also ones that we could tweak to make healthier.

It was really great just to talk to Maggie, Mary, & Nicole about their jobs. I felt so much at home spending the day in their office because I LOVE dietetics (obviously). Mary basically has my dream job! She gets to work in a community setting and teach people about simple ways to make their lives healthier. Plus, EVERYONE in the office was crazy-over-the-top friendly and welcoming; I felt like I had been working there forever! No wonder everyone loves their job!

Cutting up veggies for Mango-Avocado Salsa! :)

Mar- giving her presentation

Our salsas!

Thursday & Friday

For the past two days, Nova and I have been working in the scrape room. Nova needed to do a waste audit for her fall internship, and I just got to tag along for the ride. Lucky me! J Let me take a moment to explain what exactly that entails. Plates, bowls, and cups come around this thing (see pictures below); we scrape the food into a bucket, rinse the rest of the stuff off the plate or bowl, and then stack it on a cart. It makes a mess, it is pretty disgusting, and I kind of enjoyed it in a really odd way. However, there is a huge (and I mean HUGE) drawback to the whole waste situation and that drawback is called the Orca. The Orca is the foulest smelling contraption that I have ever had the misfortune of meeting! The food scraps are dumped into the Orca which turns it into a liquid, though I did not stick around to see the end product. The repulsive odor that comes out of the Orca is completely indescribable, but I will do my best. It is like compiling tons of rotting food (as it should, since that is basically what it is), sucking the smell from that, and putting it in the Orca. Thankfully, my trusty sidekick Nova is the brave one and she took on the Orca like a champ! I am proud to claim her as my roomie-sidekick-friend. J So we took all the waste, weighed it, and came up with the average amount of food wasted by each person. The only problem is that there were trash cans in the cafeteria for people to dispose of their own waste. There was no way for us to get a 100% accurate count, but we did our best.