Culinary School

I have been at culinary school for over a year now and I have never actually shown you guys any of it!

So today, I changed that!  I woke up really early on my day off and headed in to school, armed with my uniform and camera.

For those of you who don't know me well, I am a fifth quarter culinary student at Sullivan University. Which means I am little over four months away from graduation.  Technically the school calls me a sophomore, since I have been at school for about thirteen months, but because I am so close to graduation, I call myself a senior.




I'll definitely write another post after graduation about my time here, but for now here are some fun photos!

Mis En Place

Clean up

(Thanks to my oh-so photogenic classmates who let me take pictures and get their way this morning!)

Laughter and Memories

Lauren; The Blogger.

Edit. Cut. Reword. Rename. Omit. 

Four hours later and I will still never publish anything.  In the last year of this blog, I have found myself caught somewhere between over sharing and not-so-subtle cryptic messages. None of those make a good blog post.  Which seems to be the problem with my blog.  

I write what is on my mind.  Sometimes I just write for the sake of writing.  I do not have a target audience, I'm pretty sure those of you who read my blog are the ones who find my link off Facebook, which means we are friends.  This is the kind of stuff I would share with you over a cup of coffee, or on a road trip.  Long rants, but here I am not interrupted by anything but my own thoughts.  For someone who lives hundreds or thousands of miles away from those she would normally ramble to, this blog has turned into my outlet.  

For about the first year of this blog, no one knew about it.  I never shared it on social media, never mentioned it to friends or family, I just wrote.  Slowly I worked up the courage to share things on my Facebook page, mostly to let people keep up with me after I left for college... Because I am a notoriously bad friend when it comes to long distances. 

Some of my most popular posts are those that are the most personal... About my relationship, my body image, and my view on dating.  That will never cease to amaze me... And scare me.  Suddenly my blog became a source of stress.  

How much is too much to share?  People will read this... I'll have to edit that part out.  I don't want people to know that I'm not doing well.  Why can't I find an answer to this problem? 

I went from being carefree about what I posted, because no one read it anyways, to someone who was overly concerned about how things look to my readers. 

The last time I wrote a post, I ended up taking it down almost immediately, because it was too much of me and not enough of Lauren; the blogger. I sat in a coffee house and cried about what I had just written, making all the business men around me very uncomfortable.  That post didn't have a strong conclusion... it actually ended with me crying out for help.  It was raw, it was me, and I deleted it.  

I was scared of what other people would think, that they would suddenly realize that I was imperfect and failing.  Other bloggers aren't like that, with their perfectly edited pictures, inspirational stories, and perfect families. Then there is me, a nineteen year old mess of a college student. But no one should know that. 

This is crazy! No one is perfect, even other bloggers with their pristine Instagrams, seemingly angelic children, and artistically plated meals.  They are just like me, carefully editing and omitting the nitty gritty that is real life.  

So here is my honest statement about this blog... I don't know what I am doing.  I am learning everyday and sometimes that means that I falter and don't have a witty conclusion to wrap it all up nicely. 

Is that okay?  Maybe it is.  Maybe that post was written so that someone can understand that it's not just their life that seems to be in shambles.  That no matter how glamorous a person can describe their life, it is still hard, and it takes work.  That Lauren; the blogger, is actually Lauren; the rambler.  Cause I think I just might like that title more.

Tick-Tock

Time is the most precious commodity and we can't get more of it. - Robert Irvine

Sometimes there are days that never end, month-long weeks, twelve hour shifts that feel longer than my entire college career, and other times there are days that disappear, a year that felt more like a couple of random weekends and Christmas break than my entire freshman experience.

I will be the first to admit, I am an expert time waster.  With the help of social media, I can make two hours feel like fifteen minutes.  It's almost an art form.   But we have all heard this spiel before; "Life is over in the blink of an eye." I have heard this from my elders for years.  "I blinked and my kids were grown."  Don't blink seems to be the overwhelming consensus.  But lately that seems to be all I have been doing.

Yesterday I was sixteen and terrified of driving a car.  Twenty minutes ago I was trying to work up the courage to talk to a boy I really liked. ...Wait... It's Monday?!

Normally I don't notice these things, but at work yesterday I got a rude awakening to how cruel time can be.   While working an event for school, our speaker for the night made an alarming announcement in front of not only the crew, but also, his entire audience.  Just hours before the show, he had lost his father.

He showed an extreme amount of decorum during the entire day.  Even those who worked closest with him, were ignorant of the fact.  After this startling announcement, we all stood in shock.  Crew and audience alike.  Our host took a short pause, then gave us some words of wisdom to take with us, that I know will resonate with us for a long time.

He told us to keep in mind what is really important to us.  To not let time slip away.

As he said these words, I watched husbands hold their wives a little closer, mothers kiss their children's foreheads, and the look in an old man's eye; telling more of a story than words ever could.

No matter who we are; celebrity personality, military, college student, businessman, mother, or child, time hides itself from all of us.  It does it very well, looking for the perfect opportunity to come out of the wood work and surprise us.

Don't let it go unnoticed.  Pay attention to time as it passes, and be thankful for every second we have.  Good or bad.

The Perfection in the Hustle and Bustle.

Here I am again, in the midst of hectic quarter.  My alarm clock seems to cackle at me every morning at five, getting too much enjoyment from my exhausted attempts to press snooze.   My chef this quarter is retired military, so this means, if you are early, you are on time, and being on time means you are late.  So class for me, starts at six forty-five.  There is a large amount of pressure and an even larger amount of laughter that happens during this class.  Professionalism is replaced by sarcasm, and if you can't take a joke, it is time to take a walk.  This makes five am worth it to some extent.  The snooze fest of my other classes, not so much.

Homework piles up and I fight to find the motivation to type notes every night, study for irritatingly frequent tests, and crank out five hundred words on a topic I find completely pointless.  What keeps me going?  The promise of only nine more weeks of this madness, and after that, I never have to do it again.

Now and again though, it isn't always enough. I just can't care about the history of dining room service anymore, and I run to the every understanding arms of Netflix or escape to a tiny coffee house and nurse a Chai tea, listen to almost painfully hipster music, and edit pictures.

Just like so many quarters before this, I am struggling.  It isn't the class load, it isn't even the distance from my loved ones.  It is the pressure to be perfect, and falling short so often.   I am supposed to have a plan, a "where do you want to be" list made up, with steps on how to get there.  I thought that I would have one by now.  But in reality, right now, my list is blank and screaming at me to figure this life of mine out.

It screams; "why don't you have a job; why aren't you getting better grades; why don't you know what you want in life?" Right now, I can't quench my thirst for those answers, and I have hit the bottom of many a coffee mug looking for them.

As easy as it is to find things to complain about in the hustle and bustle of my life, I sometimes have to take a step back and appreciate the little things.  Like being able to escape to the comforts of a good cup of coffee, a solitary drive every morning, and kittens napping in the sun as you snap picture of them.  (If you have seen my instagram lately, I seem to be more than a little bit cat crazy).  Remembering to take a deep breath and reminding myself that I don't have to be perfect right now, is something that doesn't happen enough and should happen a lot more often.

I have to find the perfection in the chaos that is my life.  How ever small and infrequent as those occurrences may be.