The First Week of the Rest of My Life

It's Sunday night, my nerves begin to start on their journey to making every move nerve racking for the next day.  So little to my surprise, sleeping was almost impossible, due to the fact I have a horrible habit of waking up every hour or so in PANIC thinking I've overslept whenever something important is due to occur.  Opposed to my months of waking up around noon, waking up for Monday at 5:45 seemed oh so awful.

Thankfully, I didn't oversleep, and I began my day with dressing in my professional attire for the day ahead.

Once I entered the building of my dreams filled with kitchens, food, stainless steel out the wazoo and people who were just as obsessed with food as I was, I knew I had made the best decision in my entire life.  I was greeted by Chefs with open arms into their world and knowledge of food with enthusiasm. 


After going over all the guidelines, handbooks, rules and regulations, we were all given our uniforms, knife kits and were on our way home.

The next day, Tuesday, was more of the same thing, however we were all in uniform.  Not gonna lie, uniforms are NOT something I'm used to AT ALL, so it's taken me a while to get used to it. Chef coat, pants, hat, apron, neckerchief, black socks, white undershirt, black chef shoes, hair pulled back, minimal makeup ( MY LEAST FAVORITE GUIDELINE).

My classes consist of: Human Relations with Mr. Appel, Safety, Sanitation and Kitchen Design with Chef Heidi, and Cooking with Chef Justin & Chef Heidi.

• Human Relations is the standard blah blah blah be nice to get a job kinda crap.
• Safety, Sanitation and Kitchen design is, for right now, a monotonous computer program that teaches us all of the dangers of contamination, bacteria, fungus, allergies etc. of cooking, (which has made me paranoid at restaurants now)
• Cooking is my favorite, shocker I know.  As of right now, we are learning our cutting techniques, julienne, dice,chop etc. Scary at first, but I'm starting to get the hang of it.  We have started with potatoes, celery, onions and garlic. But will get into other aspects of cooking such as spices, cheeses, veggies, fruits and so on.

I've met some wonderful people here who I believe will be life-long friends, resources, advisers in the culinary industry and I can't wait for what lies ahead! Everybody wants food to be the main component in their lives and are very enthusiastic. 

Today, Friday, we had a meeting which was more of a motivational speech more than anything.  But it really made me realize that EVERYBODY has their failures as well as successes, but it's your willingness to reach your dream that makes you desire to push through your obstacles and use your "stickability" to make all your dreams become realities no matter what.

MARKET YOUR OWN UNIQUENESS
Steph