Well as non-luck would have it, I didn't get the scholarship. However, the real reason for any ad - to get your info - came through in the following weeks. The first call from the Institute came on a day not so different from most. I must have been doing something important because I missed it. The Institute left a voice mail which I listened to but didn't bother to call them back. I knew they were just going to spoon-feed me info about the program and persuade me to apply. So I left it to them to call back again. They called a couple more times and coincidently I kept missing the calls. I listened to each messages, but strangely enough I never mustered up the effort to return a call. Now, looking back, I ask myself why and I come up with only one answer - I just wasn't ready for the questions it would lead to.
During my latest trip to California, I just so happened to spend a couple days in San Diego. It's quite an amazing place. People have told me this before, but it's something you need to see for yourself. There were spectacular views everywhere I looked - nice beaches, clean streets, and comfortable weather. Being there got me thinking back to the calls from the Institute. When I got back to the island, I decided to fill out a request for info on their website (second time's a charm?), and as luck would now have it, I answered on their first try. It's destiny.
So there I am on the phone with the admissions office of the Art Institute of California: San Diego busting at the seams with all the added motivation from having just read The Alchemist (a great book to read for life inspiration). The admissions officer was a very nice lady named Staci. I could tell she had been doing the job for a while because she rattled off all the info at will. She was like a blazing gun of factoids. The conversation was not what I had expected though. Instead of just listening to a sales pitch, she asked me questions too. Like, "do you consider yourself a creative person?" and "What do you expect out of the Institute that you can't get from a cooking class?" It was very interview-ish. I guess her job is two-fold - to give you the info but also see if you're the right type of person for the Institute.
What most surprised me about the whole phone call was how enthusiastically I answered the questions. I poured out past experiences from cooking with my dad to FISDU cook-off victories and my desires for hands-on experience with foie gras, kobe beef, truffles, and bluefin toro. I even described to here what my future restaurant would look like. I told her about my reluctance to leave a comfortable, well-paying industry to explore a different, lower-paying lifestyle. It was like that, "I wanna be an astronaut" conversation you might have with a five- year-old that thinks anything in life is achievable.
After about an hour on the phone, we finally began wrapping things up. She finished by saying, "you would be perfect for the program and I hope you would apply at the very least. You said it yourself. You don't see yourself retiring at 65 years old from refining. Your degree in chemical engineering isn't going anywhere and neither is that industry. Your in a great position in life. Why stay in something you're not passionate about. Cooking is clearly where your passions lie."
It was great to hear those from someone else.
On a totally separate note: The technique of the week is braising. Stay tuned for the post. I'm waiting for a propane gas delivery tomorrow so I can execute it. Turns out I'm cooking too much. Go figure.
1 comments:
I think you should apply! Be open and everything will fall into place :-)
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