— Ruth Thompson Thompson

My experience as a chef is very non-conventional. You should talk to, uh, chef Fran about, uh, culinary school, baking culinary school. However, I have to say that from both those programs that I just mentioned, you know, online learning is becoming the new way that people learn. Brick and mortar is still wonderful and good, but the reward, the price, the convenience of attending an online school, we see a lot of kids who have graduated from high school who come into the Rouxbe program. So I think it depends upon your child's learning style, where they wanna go to school. Some of you may know that I worked at Whole Foods Market for 10 years, and we often saw young students who were newly graduated who would come and work in the bakery, or they would work in prepared foods because before they made that final jump to going to culinary school or pastry school, they wanted to see if they really, really liked that. So I would say to explore if there's an, an experience where your child can shadow for a day at a restaurant or a bakery or something like that, that would be another suggestion. And, um, I think that that book is still in existence. It's called What Color Is Your Parachute? It kind of helps you define what you really want to do and, and be. I do know some of the best bakers that I ever met and worked with in my life at Whole Foods Market were self-taught bakers because they just loved to bake and they loved being around food and making people happy. So, um, that, that would be my, my spin and experience, uh, on those. And my own experience is that I, every decade of my life, I've had a different career. And when I was in my mid sixties, I decided that I wanted to go to culinary school because I had spent most of my life working around food. I grew up in an Italian restaurant. My grandparents were chefs. And so from a very early age, I learned about the delivery guy, how you don't waste food, how you serve food, et cetera, et cetera. So I think that Rouxbe, for me, was a perfect fit, and it has provided me with endless opportunities endlessly and rewarding opportunities that I always feel so grateful about. So, um, just quick, um, today I got a nice note from the director of the Charlie Cart and I thought to myself, how fortunate am I that I get to be a Charlie Cart educator? And if you don't know Charlie Cart, it's a 500 pound, 600 pound kitchen on wheels that you'll find in schools, libraries, community centers, uh, charlie cart, charlie cart.com. And, um, there I am a Charlie Trolley card instructor. So you just have to just follow your passion, get excited about what you do. That's my advice. I'd be a very bad career counselor.