THE BEGINNING

I graduated high school in 2018. I was all set. I was going to my dad’s alma mater and my dream school. The day that I visited this school I knew it was where I was going to end up. Ironic though, I never wanted to go to school in a big city. Now I ended up in New York city. But when I visited I knew it was where I wanted to be. I was so excited to go to the school and be studying something that I loved. Psychology was something that just fit me. I was always that type of person, the listener, the helper and the trusted one. I loved being able to work with kids and people who needed someone to be there for them. I loved the psychology class I took in high school. It was perfect. Going to my dream school to study something I liked and I was very good at.

I was set. I knew I was going go to this school for the next four years of my life. I moved in the fall of 2018. I made some great friends and was in an amazing scholarship program. I was happy. I spent my weeks going to class and my weekends trading off traveling to see my girlfriend or her coming to me. It was a good distance away from her school and a convenient train ride into the city. It was the perfect way to be apart but still be able to be together.

Although it was convenient to get to my girlfriend it was terribly hard to get home to my family. It was only an hour and half drive to home but with expensive tolls and gas it never made sense for my parents to come get me all the time and I wasn’t allowed a car on campus. I would end up taking a 4 hour trip home on 5 different forms of public transportation that costed a pretty penny. It was hard. It was lonely. I never thought that it would feel so awful to not be able to get home. I thought going to college so close to home but still far enough away where no one would come visit me would be fun. But it was just really hard. I would cry a lot and be scared that I wasn’t where I was supposed to be.

While this was hard for my first year of school it got 10x harder when during my sophomore year my mom got admitted to the hospital. She had a serious spinal infection that resulted in her having to have a part of her spine taken out and replaced with rods. It was a very long process for her to even find out what was wrong with her and then when she finally got her surgery she had a six month recovery. I would willingly take the expensive train ride home (with my girlfriend) every other weekend to come up and see my family and help my mom out. During this time I realized this wasn’t something I wanted.

I didn’t want to be away from home. It was too far and it was too lonely sitting in my bed waiting to hear updates on what was going on with my mom. On top of all that I was bored. Constantly I would hear people talking about having to study and taking time to do homework and I just never had any of that. All my classes were boring. I did more work for my general education classes then my psych classes. While I loved the field it never challenged me. It was interesting but it wasn’t making me feel like I was doing something amazing with my time. Not having work to do and sitting around just made me more aware that I was lonely. I would constantly be waiting for the weekend to either see my girlfriend or go home. I loved my friends at school but they were always busy with their majors or social groups and I would be sitting in my room watching my shows and cleaning. It just wasn’t what I wanted anymore.

Sophomore year Christmas break is when all the changes that I so desperately needed started to happen. I started to bake more and watching more cooking shows and experimenting in the kitchen. I started to secretly research culinary schools and just see if I could get in and what the requirements were. My mom had once told me when I chose my college that that was it. I would be going there all four years, no transferring. So on December 29th when I said to her “what if I transferred to culinary school?”, never in a million years did I think she’d say “that would be a great idea! Look into it”. I was so shocked, but I pulled out my computer and showed her all the research I already did. I applied to 2 different programs over the next month and got in. I visited the school and made the deposit and that started my journey of going to culinary school.

Although this is so much better for me, it is probably one of the scariest things I’ve done. I gave up a lot of scholarships and a lot of comfort in order to pursue this passion. It is going to be hard work. It is definitely going to be way harder than what I was studying before. It’s not going to give me a cushy lifestyle in the future but it is what I wanted. With the support of my family and especially the support of my girlfriend I knew that this was something I had to do and could do even if it was going to be hard. Im excited to start this journey in my life and I can’t wait to finally be in it.