Culinary arts majors deal with a variety of health and safety issues. Kitchens are potentially dangerous places. Students must learn to chop, slice and dice foods with speed, which often leads to cut fingers. Moving in a busy kitchen when you are in a hurry to prepare food leads to bumps and bruises. Students also experience burns from hot water, food and kitchen equipment on a regular basis. In addition to kitchen injuries, students must also manage calories taken in while testing dishes. It is impossible to be a chef without eating and sampling food throughout the day. This increases your caloric intake and over time, might lead to weight gain.
Professional kitchens are intense. Restaurant kitchens are filled with chefs, servers, bus people and dishwashers. There open flames, knives in use and constant action when food is being cooked. To mimic the pressure culinary arts majors encounter once they are in the workforce, schools push their students to work quickly and professionally. The field is competitive and to be among the elite in the culinary field, you must be at the top of your class. Preparing students for the real world of professional cooking is the goal of all culinary arts schools, so teaching kitchens are filled with emotional and physical stress.
Culinary arts majors need to have a focus. Just as traditional college students choose an academic path, culinary students must determine the style of cooking that most appeals to them. Some schools specialize in specific styles and others cover the basics, with just a few courses in a particular style. Narrowing your choices for specialization is a challenge if you enjoy several different styles of cooking. Committing to one style or cuisine feels as if you are giving up on another. Since most restaurants serve food from a specific cuisine, chefs must concentrate on mastering a particular style. Specializations include ethnic cooking, vegetarian cuisine and patisserie or boulangerie, which are baking specializations. Specialization is not necessary, but mastering a certain style gives chefs an edge over their competition.
In addition to the hands-on challenges culinary arts majors face, there are academic challenges, too. Culinary arts programs feature a vigorous schedule of tests. Student chefs must learn kitchen terminology, as well as the history of their specialization. This is done through traditional study methods including text book assignments and written testing. In addition to traditional book learning, cooking students spend long periods of time in the kitchen, learning hands-on kitchen skills. The combination of kitchen work, studying and testing can be overwhelming, leading to exhaustion and stress.