Lesson 1: Orientation!

I survived my first day of culinary school!!!! I started getting EXTREMELY nervous last night and was very very emotional.. I was worrying if my uniform was ironed enough, if I would fit in or be really embarrassed on the first day.. I didn't really know what to expect, so I was flat out terrified.

This morning I woke up after having stressful nightmares all night about being late for class and was still really nervous. I got up super early even though I didn't have to catch the train until around 10:20. I gathered my freshly ironed uniform, my insanely heavy toolkit, and kissed my mom goodbye as I headed out the door for my first day of culinary school.

As I was on the train I started listening to music and calming down.. the nerves finally went away and I started getting excited again. I have this fear of being late for things, so I got to the school super early. I figured I should since it's the first day and I have to get my locker, knife kit, books, etc. After checking in at the registrar, I stumbled up to the 14th floor to find my locker.. I was practically falling over trying to carry all of my heavy bags. Obviously, I couldn't find my locker. I looked out in the hall with the other lockers and it wasn't there...so then I went into the women's locker room... it wasn't there. I looked back in the hallway and back in the locker room and then down the hall.... I HAD NO IDEA WHERE MY LOCKER WAS.. I was sweating bullets and felt like such an idiot until I heard some other new students asking for help to find their lockers. So, I finally gave in and asked someone. I was directed into the women's bathroom (who knew they had even more lockers in there) and changed into my uniform. I looked into the mirror and couldn't believe that I was all suited up for my first day of culinary school.

I went into the hallway and realized I didn't know what kitchen I'm supposed to be in.. ugh I'm a mess. The director of student affairs saw me looking around confused and told me that I'll be in kitchen 1402, but it wasn't set up yet so I had to wait. In the meantime, I introduced myself to 2 other new students that wandered out in the hallway. One girl seemed really sweet and also went to college and decided to come to culinary school to pursue her (second) passion. She majored in music and is from Dallas. The other guy seemed nice too.. he's from the Bronx and decided to try out culinary school because college didn't work out for him. Around 1, we all gathered into our classroom that we will be in everyday until we graduate in May. The director of student affairs talked to us first for over 2 hours, going over the guidelines, policies, etc.... pretty boring stuff. I was waiting for them to suggest we play an icebreaker game/name game...but culinary school is no Elon. Our chef instructor, Chef Allen, continued the class by going over our curriculum for module 1 and giving us a brief tour of the class and some cleaning procedures. We got our knife kits and started putting them all into the protectors and into our cases.. I am verry scared that I will seriously hurt myself with those knives! They are very very sharp! 2 students already cut themselves today just by putting them in their cases. On Wednesday we will begin our introductory knife skills.

All in all, it was a pretty successful day. We got out of class 15 minutes early and I was able to catch the 5:26 express train back to Matawan. My mom and I just had a lovely dinner that she cooked for me; spaghetti squash with ricotta and pine nuts. I am exhausted from all the excitement today! I'm so excited to see what I have in store for me the rest of the week!