The Culinary Tales: Prologue
My mid-life crisis came early.
I was supposed to be a journalist. I ended up building Websites instead. Not that it was a bum trade, really. I was right in the middle of the dot-com explosion, doing a job that didn’t even exist when I was growing up. And it was actually fun. Everyone was young (you had to be, to, you know, understand computers), there was money to be made, and the work was challenging (in a good way.)
Of course it wasn’t all open-bar bliss. There were difficult people and long nights (I once worked for 36 hours straight with only a two-hour break to run home and change my underwear) then I woke up one day wondering if I made one giant mistake, trading a paycheck for my creative soul. I needed to change something.
At first I wanted to just pack everything up and move to Europe (because who doesn’t want to just pack up and move to Europe). I could learn to cook there.
The idea for culinary school wasn’t new. The first time I met a professional chef I wanted to be one. But the cost of culinary school made me gag a little bit. I had just graduated from an expensive private university, I hadn’t even started paying off my student loans yet. Over the years, I would entertain the idea of opening some kind of bar or tapas restaurant but could never actually pull the trigger. I never even worked in a restaurant or a bar before, what did I know?
It was time to bite the bullet. Even if it took 20 years to open that restaurant, at least I’d be prepared. So I did some research and found that I had a few options.
CHOOSING A CULINARY SCHOOL
Option 1: Moving to France and learning to cook there
Pros: I’d finally get to live in Europe, and France is *the* gastronomical capital of the world.
Cons: I’ll still have American bills to pay and I was told getting a job there would be next to impossible. Plus it’s France. And it’s sooo cliche. Did I really want to be a cliche?
Option 2: Culinary Institute of America
Pros: It’s the Harvard of culinary schools.
Cons: I’d have to move to New York. And it’s VERY expensive.
Option 3: Fifteen-month program culminating in an associates degree
Pros: I can keep the day job while I go to school at night; but it has international name recognition/acclaim.
Cons: VERY expensive. And it would be a 25-mile commute each way, every day.
Option 4: Two-year program culminating in an associates degree
Pros: Only a couple of miles from work/home. I also liked their capstone requirement, which is a fully vetted business plan for a restaurant, complete with financial projections as well as interior design.
Cons: Also spendy. Plus, school/program fairly new, not known internationally (a potential issue if I want to get a job cooking in Europe.)
Option 5: Approximately 30 weeks, certificate program
Pros: Founded by folks who also founded Option 2, shorter and cheaper program than options 2 and 3.
Cons: Their entire curriculum was contained in a spiral-bound notebook no more than 1/4″ thick. I had to wonder how much I would really learn here. Tuition was about 50% cheaper than options 2 and 3, but no financial aid available. And the commute was also going to be hellish.
Option 6: Approximately nine months, certificate program
Pros: Substantially cheaper than any of the above options, meets 1-2x a week
Cons: No financial aid available, only meets 1-2x a week. The school was originally created for the home cook, and the professional program was geared for people who had to work and couldn’t commit to a program like options 2 and 3.
In the end, I opted for a degree program because I wouldn’t just learn recipes, I’d learn technique. (If you can learn technique, then you won’t need a recipe to cook anything.) It came down to options 3 and 4, and though the latter might have been the smarter, easier choice, I went with the former mostly because of the name recognition, and the promise that they could place me in jobs here and abroad.
And then funding was a whole other drama. I didn’t want to burden myself with more student loans, but so many people talked me out of my one other viable option: cashing out my 401k. I came to a compromise instead, financing the endeavor half with student loans and half with my 401k. If I were to go through with my plan to intern in Europe, and jobs really are that hard to come by, I’m going to have to cash in the whole kit and caboodle anyway, right?
At least this way, I bought myself some time to come up with new options. Or stumble into a miracle. Sometimes, all you need is time and the solution to a problem presents itself.
Meanwhile… I was going back to school.
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