Being a Culinary Student

Hello to all my foodies out there. I am here to basically describe what my day to day life is as a culinary student at Johnson and Wales University. All the people who are in k-12 right now thinks is hard waking up to go to class in the morning, yeah I promise you its not that bad. I wake up Monday through Thursday at 5:50 am, to get up and put the same uniform on for four days straight. I know you are thinking its not that bad, but try this. I go to class before 7 in the morning, even though my class don't start till 7. Now let me guess you are thinking that it was my fault for picking a morning class. Thinking like I do, I am in that class for 6 hours a day, for 4 days now, do I want my nights taken up by classes just so I can sleep a few extra hours or do I want my nights free. For me personally I still might would have to wake up pretty early to go to my work study job. This is why I chose morning labs. We rotate labs every 9 days. So we move pretty fast pace. Now remember all those time you played hooky. NOPE! Can't do it here. Remember we are in a lab segment for 9 days. If you miss a day, you miss a lot of important information. You could miss the one big product you have to make on your practical day. For those who don't know what a practical is. It is where we make the product, or do the method of cooking and present it to the chef who is teaching the lab. We are only allowed to miss one day of class. If you are late multiple times or missed your second day of class, you will be dropped from that segment. No if, ands, or buts about it.
​          Now having morning labs I am in class from 7am-1pm. Most of the time I get out of class and go straight to work study. It is my job, it puts money in my pocket to pay for food and what little supplies I might need. Normally I am there till 5. I don't know if I can stress this enough, but going from a FAST pace production kitchen to a SIT down desk job, you will get sleepy. Heck one day I almost fell asleep at the front desk. If I am lucky I will have all my homework done by the time I get off, if not I have to go back to my dorm and do my homework. That most of the time consists of a study guide packet, quiz, math conversion worksheet, and discussion board. The second thing I don't think I could stress enough is, if you go in this major/field then make sure you are REALLY GOOD AT MATH! We use math everyday. I don't know if you have notice, but I normally have a very busy four days. By the time I am done with everything, ate and shower included, I am exhausted. There are nights that I have crashed early and some nights I just can't sleep. I have learned a few things that aren't dealing with culinary while being here though. 
        1. Listen to your body, it will tell you if your too tired, not eating enough, or even if you just need a break. 
        2. Your body can take a lot. The things you put yourself through, yes I have crashed and it sucks, but I have learned my limits. Being a culinary student you can cut yourself, burn yourself, or hurt yourself in any way possible. You can take that. I personally was more worried about burning myself, because I have don it in the past and couldn't take the pain. Day 6 of my lab I burn myself and guess what, I worked right through it after seeing the nurse in hope that it wouldn't blister. 
           3. YOU NEED TO KNOW CONVERSIONS!!!! I never payed much attention to the gallon man and how to convert weights, but now seeing how much I actually use it, I highly regret not trying to actually learn it. I really can't stress this enough. 
          4. You will get stressed out. I think every college student can agree to this. It's going to happen one way or another. If you have bad day or a bad week set a day to relax. For me I set aside a Saturday or Friday. I normally find something to do with a friend or just lay in bed and do absolutely nothing. 
          5. Life moves on, you and the people that you might have been friends with grow up. I go to school four hours away from my hometown and honestly I don't talk to half the people I was friends with back home. I changed and some people even said I look happier. I sum it up to this, I grew up. 
              6. Drama don't go away. Some of the things I have seen here is still the high school drama I saw back home. I have just learned not to associate myself with it. It really doesn't matter where you go, there are going to be people that are immature and don't want to be there. You just got to suck it up really. 
               7. Dont be scared. You will have to try new things and you won't like it all, but its ok. You have to branch out and do things that you aren't comfortable with, but don't be scared to do it.
                8. Don't loose your motivation.  It is easy to look at all the things that could go wrong, or get caught up on the things that don't work your way. Just don't loose that drive you have. You are going to have people that put you down and tell you that you shouldn't be here. Prove them wrong. 

I might seem like at first that I was complaining about the way my day to day seems to run. I just want to say that I wouldn't change it for the world. I love what I am going to school for and this school is just toughing me up for the real world. 


sign, 
Jamie <3
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