A former nursing major took an interest in the kitchen, learning how to help people by using her knowledge in the culinary field.

Q.) How stressful is it working in an environment as a culinary student?

A.) I don’t think it’s too stressful. If you like what you do in any other job, then you don’t really find many bad things about it. So, if you end up liking cooking or baking, you end up liking what you do and don’t find too many stressful things about it.

Q.) What are your favorite things to learn as a culinary student?

A.) I really like learning different menu ideas, different things you can cook, how to scale ingredients properly so you’re not washing a whole bunch of dishes and knives. Knifework is probably my favorite.

Q.) How do you balance your lifestyle as a culinary student with so many other things going on?

A.) I’m still trying to figure it out. I am taking day classes right now, so I haven’t really found out how do do that right now. I’m going to school in the mornings to afternoons, and then I’m going to my job in the evenings, and then I get up, and I start all over again. So, I think it’s pretty hard to separate the two. I guess in the weekends, I mainly do some simple household chores, trying to make time for myself that way. I’ll squeeze in homework if I ever had time during the week to do it.

Q.) What are you striving towards as a culinary student, at a level that you are not quite there yet?

A.) I would like to run my own little restaurant if I can. Of course, like, you know, I’ve always thought about what I’ve wanted to do. Right now, I work in a country club, so I think working in different country clubs would be pretty fun, while I can save up money. And then, you know, potentially opening up a restaurant with a couple of my culinary friends. Then, if I get the opportunity to come back here and teach, I think that would be pretty fun.

Q.) What advice would you give to the rest of the student body who want to be in culinary but aren’t quite sure what to do?

A.) Well, firstly, it doesn’t hurt asking questions, and if you think that you like it, and you find yourself doing culinary or pastry more at home, then you should give it a shot in the classroom because you can learn some real, like, fundamental stuff that can help you in the long run, when you’re, on your own. Like I wasn’t always like a culinary pastry major. I was, I was a nursing major, and I kept finding myself, like, going back and thinking about culinary and pastry and like, how fun it would be to do that as like a living and make a tough decision on, you know, what I wanted to do.

Q.) What led you to get to that decision from going to a nursing major to a culinary one?

A.) A couple of things I didn’t really like, how, in nursing, like you say, you can help everyone, but you can’t really help everyone there. But in culinary, I think it’s a different way of helping someone, which doesn’t take too long to help someone who needs help.