Posted                      

quote:

---

Originally posted by Custard.:
Decent-sized rucksack for carrying stuff.

---

Posted                          

quote:

---

Originally posted by Catrine:

quote:

---

Originally posted by Custard.:
Decent-sized rucksack for carrying stuff.

---

They now have these with wheels so it's easier to get around. If your offspring needs to get a bag for travelling, they'll be well off with this type. It's often very draining carrying around a bag on your shoulders when you are emotionally tired from all the travelling and upheaval.

---

Posted                          

quote:

---

Originally posted by Catrine:
Jengie, you can now get those rucksacks with the trolley bit built in. Perfect for multicarrying, and no bigger than the same litre capasity rucksack- magic!

---

Posted                       

quote:

---

Originally posted by Curiosity killed ...:
Stupid question - how extreme would it be to set up food deliveries? My daughter has big food intolerances/allergies and will struggle to feed herself (especially if her flat mates decide she has food to available when they roll in from the pub)

---

Speaking from my experience as an ethical vegan, self-catering in the UK...

Lots of students do Internet grocery orders. If you split the delivery charge with housemates it's likely cheaper than a bus fare, & saves a lot of time & hassle & lugging heavy stuff around. They are usually a PITA to do the first time, but re-ordering is easier. Online ordering is a really handy way to bulk-order any particular foods that are hard to find, expensive, or just heavy & bulky locally - I currently have a year's supply of UHT soya milk, tinned beans, nuts & dried fruit by the kilo, huge bags of rice & pasta, & suchlike under the stairs.

It's often possible to get hold of more specialist stuff that's not otherwise available locally by ordering over the internet (vegan friends split an order from veganstore.co.uk for all sorts of good things, like veggie liquorice allsorts & powdered soya milk for camping).

Food storage from big orders does not have to take up that much room if you think creatively. Where other students have posters, my walls are decorated & insulated by stacks of tins & milk cartons. Feeding friends in from the pub is easy if you have 10kg of rice & a squillion tins of beans to start a stir-fry - don't need to worry about running out. Work out what people might actually want to steal (in my case, choc soya milk, ice-cream, dark choc, biscuits...), & just get enough to share round before anyone can steal it

Sharing a kitchen - the wonderful thing about being vegan is that no-one *wants* to steal your milk (except when I lived with 3 vegans last year, which was annoying). But remarkably little stuff actually needs to go in the fridge, particularly in Winter & Spring terms. There's the old trick of hanging stuff out the window / on the windowsill, UHT milk & juice keeps a couple of days at cool room temperature anyway... it's not that difficult. I'd advise having your own pans & keeping them in your room / locked cupboard in halls for any student anyway - they *will* get used & not washed up. Most food prep can be done at the desk in your room (I had a tiny kitchen with a bath in it in first year so everyone did that). If your offspring has severe anaphylactic reactions, might be worth telling the uni ASAP - I have heard of them having a 'peanut-free kitchen' shared with students with similar needs, or various non-standard accomodation options, but you'd need to book that well ahead.

The tricky bit that I've found is shared / communal cooking. Stick a list up in the kitchen of what you *can* and can't eat (the can bit is important - no-one knows what to feed a vegan at first, but most people can cook a stir-fry with beans, nuts, veg, & rice, or pasta & tomato sauce, or baked potatoes & chili). Cook your friends lots of food & make yourself popular, & then they will ask you for recipes & know things to cook - my choc brownies, scones, & flapjack made me very popular in first term. Find other people with weird dietary requirements, & agree to cook stuff that each other can eat - even if you don't have the same needs, they will often be happy to go out of their way if you do the same. I can do quite reasonable gluten-free stuff for this reason, even though I'm fine with wheat. After me being here for 4 years, most people have got the idea by now, & I often find myself turning up to shared meals with kind people pushing all sorts of delicious-looking things under my nose saying 'You can eat this!' excitedly. 'Tis great & a good thing that I am a hungry person.

Strikes me that anyone could do a lot worse than an online order for a week or two's groceries delivered, maybe a term's worth of storable staple foods, if you are trying to think of something to give offspring a good start at uni - particularly if you aren't able to drop them off in person. Trying to work out where the local shops etc are in Fresher's Week can be confusing.

To all parents - please, PLEASE make sure your offspring can cook at least one of two very simple meals & use a washing machine before you send them to uni. In my first two years I lived with one poor lad who could only cook cheese toasties on arrival, one who could manage a fried breakfast, & one who owned only a bowl & a fork & lived on instant noodles & takeaway pizza. Eventually they learnt to boil pasta & stick a jar of sauce on top, and put a frozen pie in the oven & take it out again. I still do not understand how they did not get scurvy, except that people occasionally took pity on them & gave them proper meals. It is a great source of amusement at the ened of Fresher's Week to walk past the laundry & laugh at the poor clueless freshers trying to work out what goes where. I cannot believe that intelligent 18-year-olds do not know these things, but a worrying number do not. Please, please, for the sake of all of us who have to be nice to these befuddled creatures & not bite our tongues off laughing, at least teach them a quick spag bol, or even the rudiments of beans on toast (yes, I really have heard of a fresher who could not make toast - he had not worked out to put the butter on *after* the bread goes in the toaster).

Otherwise, bring as little as possible. Your offspring will be moving around lots for the next few years, & additional junk to cart around is just not worth it. If they *really* need extra mugs / a tin-opener / a spare towel / anything else, then it will encourage them to be resourceful & responsible to sort it out themselves, & most of life's necessities can be found cheap at the nearest second-hand shop or on Freecycle for nothing.

Tip to those starting uni soon - a handy way to earn spare cash is to sign up to be experimented on. Your new home will probably be full of people with ideas to test out, seeking something cheaper & less ethically complicated than a lab rat - the undergraduate student is the ideal experimental animal. Psychology, economics departements are often good for easy stuff - you might be asked to learn a list of words, or pretend you are a farmer buying weather forecasts. For the more adventurous, I've had 5 types of brain scan from the Psychology neuroimaging unit (get pics of your brain - it's rather beautiful, & at least I know I have one), been poked, prodded, measured, & pretended to be a patient for the medical school, given blood samples for Biology, taken homeopathy for Health Sciences, played on websites for CompSci... have a quick nose around departmental websites & keep your eyes open for flyers around campus - once you are on thier lists as an enthusiastic victim you can make a fair bit of pocket money, and mess up the output of your uni's scientific research, quite painlessly. It's usually quite interesting & may be useful career-wise getting a look at Proper Research too.

--------------------
'Truth is my authority, not authority my truth' - Mary Dyer, Quaker martyr.

Posted                          

quote:

---

Originally posted by Gracious rebel:
Yes there was always a parents programme on the Open Days.

---

Posted                         

quote:

---

Originally posted by Gracious rebel:
Another soon to be 'parent of a Uni student' checking in here. Son is off to Nottingham next month. Haven't got as far as working out what he needs to take, but he's in fully catered hall for the first year, so should be much like being at home I guess?!

What he is taking that is 'unique' is a poster sized photo of his girlfriend that he had done last week. Definitely something to remind him of home. He's been with her for nearly 3 years and I'm sure she will find it tough when he goes away, as she virtually lives at our place now.

We did take him to several of the Open days, visits, interviews, but he also went to some on his own by train, or had lifts with other parents taking their kids. Yes there was always a parents programme on the Open Days. All a bit different to when I started my degree in 78.

His most pressing concerns however are what to take to the Reading Festival this week though! He bought a tent in Argos on Saturday for £15 and I must say I'm impressed.

---

Posted                       

quote:

---

Originally posted by Duck:
Speaking from my experience as an ethical vegan, self-catering in the UK...
<snip>
I am a hungry person.

---

--------------------
I upped mine. Up yours.
Suffering for Jesus since 1966.
WTFWED?

Posted                          

quote:

---

Originally posted by Campbellite:

quote:

---

Originally posted by Duck:
Speaking from my experience as an ethical vegan, self-catering in the UK...
<snip>
I am a hungry person.

---

---

my X used to say, "how do you spell vegetarian? B-A-D-H-U-N-T-E-R"

my medical needs are turning me into a fishitarian, though - and I am/was a good hunter.

Chasee will be fine. She was a veg from 8th grade until Thaliand, when she became a "just eat it and don't ask too many questions"atarian.

--------------------
Evil Dragon Lady, Breaker of Men's Constitutions

"It's hard to be religious when certain people are never incinerated by bolts of lightning.” -Calvin

Posted                       

quote:

---

Originally posted by Campbellite:

quote:

---

Originally posted by Duck:
Speaking from my experience as an ethical vegan, self-catering in the UK...
<snip>
I am a hungry person.

---

---

Huh! I am hungry 'cos I am a fit & healthy ultramarathon runner who jumps up & down a lot & is even now plotting a bike route to Greenbelt from the Northern Wilderness, I'll have you know

Curiosity - as others have said, just explaining stuff to her flatmates will probably help a lot. Make a note & stick it to the kitchen cupboard as a reminder. Tell the uni ASAP - you might be able to arrange for a larger room or extra food storage (completely randomly in my first year I ended up with a triple room to myself, so there is often a bit of wiggle room). Decent plastic food-storage boxes for the fridge might help too, & permanent markers to name stuff. The only thing I've found that really needs to be kept in there is marge, & actually you can get by without that quite easily if you have to (except for cake, when obviously the thing to do is to make lots of cake at once to finish it up).

If it's 'weird food' then it's very unlikely to get eaten. 18-year-olds just leaving home do not IME tend to be the most adventurous eaters - Mum's no longer telling you to eat your greens, so a depressing amount of freshers will just stick to readymade pizza every night & shy away from anything 'odd-looking' or new. Keeping a week's supply of basics about the place (buying in bulk is often cheaper anyway) & any particularly tasty stuff in her room should avoid any problems. I don't think anyone except fellow-vegans has *ever* tried to steal my soya milk, & if you've got that & some porridge oats you can survive for days if essays render proper cooking impossible.

Daughter might end up with no tasty biscuits & snack food if she leaves them lying around the kitchen, but she's unlikely to end up with no food whatsoever given a good stock up on bulk staples to begin with. Just take her off to the local supermarket or do an internet order when you arrive, & that should last out emergencies all term, even if it's just rice & lentils for the last week.

If you can work out if there's one place on campus / in town that does stuff you can eat that will probably be helpful socially too (even if it does end up with you eating lots of chips & beans).

You've probably realised this by now, but a lot of rubber gloves contain milk protein. So do most condoms - beware Fresher's week when you seem to get buried in people wanting to give you free condoms. Your daughter may need to be warned off the joys of making them into water bombs to scare off the Annoying Geese

Try looking at it positively - your daughter is going to *have* to cook proper food with actual ingredients, so she's going to be a lot healthier than the average student, & probably have lots of friends after a few weeks as housemates realise that actually Toast is Not The Only Food & they miss proper home cooking.

--------------------
'Truth is my authority, not authority my truth' - Mary Dyer, Quaker martyr.

Posted                       

quote:

---

Originally posted by Jengie Jon:
Don't get me onto biscuits. I have concluded that the only way to be safe with biscuits is to read the label EVERY SINGLE TIME I purchase them.

---

Posted                          

quote:

---

Originally posted by rufiki:
I heard of one biology student who labelled her milk "milk experiment". Apparently no-one touched it.

---

Posted                      

quote:

---

Originally posted by Doublethink:
... its - the first time away from home, first time with proper cash rather than pocket money, first time with access to a bar on a regular basis, first time unsupervised, first time cooking for oneself etc etc.

---

Did we know each other? Except Mum did insist that we, all of us, learned to cook. I was also so terrified of my money running out, that I allocated myself $C5.50 a week spending money. Granted, back in 1967 dollars that bought a lot of coffee, beer, and pipe tobacco. And a Sunday trip to Blesséd Tim Horton's. He wasn't sainted then.

Bars were my downfall. And hot chips. And pickled eggs.



--------------------
Even more so than I was before

Posted                          

quote:

---

Originally posted by dolphy:

quote:

---

Originally posted by Tazman:
I think one non essential item that is a great asset is a small house plant. It reminds you to take care of yourself ie. water and sunlight essential!

---

If you do have a house plant, make sure it is sturdy enough to deal with alcohol and ciggie butts! Ahhh, the memories of music college parties!

---

Posted                      

quote:

---

Originally posted by Leprechaun:
Gracious Rebel,

I tried to PM you about your post but your box is full - little miss popular!

---

Posted                       

quote:

---

Originally posted by dj_ordinaire:
Despite being a plant scientists, I managed to kill every house-plant I tried to grow. Even the cactus. .

---

Posted                       

quote:

---

Originally posted by Petrified:
Lots of good advice here, problems is (looks around to see if Emma is about) whisper He doesn't like tea (or coffee) is hot chocolate ok

---

He doesn't have to like tea or coffee. He just has to know how to make it.

ETA: Having said that, I learned to drink coffee while at Uni.

[ 23. August 2007, 09:51: Message edited by: rufiki ]

Posted                       

quote:

---

Originally posted by rufiki:
He doesn't have to like tea or coffee. He just has to know how to make it.

---

Posted                      

quote:

---

Originally posted by Curiosity killed ...:
She's in a room in a shared flat, 6 bedrooms, bathroom, lounge and kitchen between 6 students, separate room (cell), which is why the worries about food.

---