[Auridan]

Oh boy.

I was about to write a pretty long response about how crappy the job is, but 1) my opinion is pretty skewed and 2) I'm not a CS myself. What I can say is, don't go into it expecting to be Gordon Ramsay in half a year. You won't be trained as anything unless you seek it out. If you just come in to work, make chow according to the recipe card, clean up, and go home, they'll happily let you do that your entire enlistment. Don't expect training to fall out of the vents for you. Chase it.

Now, as for what I know about your daily schedule...you're going to have very long days, from before breakfast to after dinner. You're going to clean more, and more thoroughly, than almost anyone else, because you hold the crew's health in your hands. You're pretty much always going to make too much chow, and a lot of it will get tossed. You will NEVER be appreciated as much as you want or deserve.

Some pluses: The job is as consistent as they come. Your role in it will change, but nothing that needs to be done will be any different 10 years from now. A good CS is in arguably the best position to get hookups from the crew for a couple reasons. Lots of people will do you favors for more chow, like handling your laundry, and you're going to have contacts in pretty much every department on the ship since your FSAs are going to come from everywhere, which lets you call in favors of infinite variety. And if you actually are a decent chef in your own right, you might get assigned to the mess of a senior officer and get loads of positive face time.