My first entry about school

After getting a BA 15 years ago that I never used, joining the Army and then being a stay at home mom and Army wife for 10+ years; I decided that at the age of 40 I needed to pursue a career that I was passionate about – Pastry Chef. In August I started class at Kapi’olani Community College in Culinary Arts. At first, I was a little nervous about going back to school, after all, I was old enough to be the mother of most of my classmates, but as the semester went on my nerves eased and I got pretty well acquainted with a lot of my classmates.

Truthfully, my biggest fear was my fundamentals class. The Chef instructor had graduated from CIA in the early 1970’s and had worked all over Hawaii before becoming an instructor a decade or so ago. I had to have his approval to even register for his class – consisted of e-mailing him a Word document answering a list of questions he had (the answers were on the class website). He has reputation has a demanding hard-a** (well earned) in comparison to the other fundamentals instructor. Just getting through his class is a right of passage among the students!

That said I busted my butt in class, practicing at home and turning in every writing assignment (7 each week). Our first writing assignment, due on the first day of class, was “The Role of Food in My Life”. It took me about 5 times to get the paper the way I wanted it and it ended up being 2.5 pages (could have been longer but it was late). Several people only had a paragraph or so, I mean come on, we’re culinary majors, food should be your passion! I’m not saying it needs to consume every waking moment, but if you’re not passionate about what you’re doing, it’s going to show in a big way. Oh, and we had to discuss our papers in class, so while I rambled on for a while about how food plays multiple roles, some were more along the lines of “I learned to cook because my mom went back to work” end of statement.

So, anyway, I survived my first semester back (really hard with kids and a husband) and am looking forward to tackling next semester. I think I was a little over ambitious last semester and took 11 credits, which with the family, was hard. Next semester I’m only taking 8 credits – nutrition and dining room service. I’m not in hurry to graduate, but would like to done in under 3 years!