Don't call it work!

Many people graduating high school don't know what they want to do when they graduate. So they typically choose a career that their parents want them to do or something that society deems as acceptable. However, they find that halfway through college they aren't happy. They either suffer through and stay unhappy in their career or they switch majors and spend a few more years in school only to realize they still aren't happy.

When I started at Sullivan, I honestly wasn't sure what I was doing here. I started at Sullivan as a Baking and Pastry student. I have no clue where I came up with the idea to go to school for baking. My second quarter of Baking 1 made me realized how unhappy I had become since first quarter in basic skills. I began to doubt why I was even at Sullivan. I had to sit down and think hard about the past 6 months. I realized how much I had enjoyed my first quarter. After talking to my friends,family, and reevaluating myself I realized that my heart was truly with the culinary program. I switched my major, and am now finishing up my 3rd quarter in Garde Manger.  I have learned so many skills and every time I am in lab I have a smile on and I crave cooking when I'm not in lab. I know that I made the right decision and will be happy for years to come.

Remember: you if you love what you do, you'll never work a day in your life.

Lori (:

Confidence



Royal Icing Tiaras I've been practicing on! :)

The cake I made in Baking II! (:

A few weeks ago, I started working on my piece for the competition next month! When I first started, I thought I would fail miserably and there was no way I would ever be able to pull off something so incredible. Was I getting myself in over my head? The first day when we got into lab, I was really dreading it. I questioned myself and my abilities. Am I good enough to do this? This has been a big learning experience for me. It's all about confidence. I finally saw that everyone had confidence in me but I had no confidence in myself. Since then, I've been working on piping royal icing tiaras and have learned that practice makes perfect. You can't walk into something and think your going to be good at it the very first time. Especially, if you have never worked with it before. The first day actually wasn't that bad! I didn't do nearly as bad as I thought I would do and have been getting better with it ever since! Of course you dont wanna go in thinking your the best, thats not what confidence is. Confidence is simply believing in yourself. If you put your mind to it, you can do anything. It's not necessarily going to be easy and it'll take time, but this is where dedication comes in. It isn't really about the skill, of course you do have to have a little bit of skill, but its about the amount of time you're willing to put into it. Skill comes from practice. While everyone else is in bed at 5am, the team is usually at the bakery. Sometimes I really don't want to go in and wanna just take a break. But I know my goal is mastering this showpiece. & that won't happen laying in bed sleeping. Instead of dreading practice, now, I actually look forward to waking up at 4am to go work on my piece. College is teaching me a lot about myself. Sure, I still have my doubts, but this experience has taught me a lot about myself and I'm starting to gain confidence in myself. It's amazing that other people can believe in you so much. I love the team so much & were all starting be like a family.

-Allysa. :)

Persevere

By: Halie Raymer

Persevere: To continue in a course of action even in the face of difficulty or with little or no indication of success. On January 20, 2012, I attended my first "show piece," competition in Pontiac, Michigan. I was oblivious to how dramatically this event would transform my life. Over the previous two weeks, I had been enduring my first real taste of physical labor. Every. Single. Morning... I would wake up before the birds, at approximately 4:00am, to be ready and mentally focused to sculpt puff pastry fat at 5:00am. 2 hours before my first lab even started. To top it off, I would stay after school till around 3pm. near everyday. All was not lost. My piece blossomed into a magical story. It was unbelievable, almost unfathomable, to see the difference between my premature blueprint and my final product. So much had changed from the image I had once pictured in my mind. The long hard work, the exhausting hours, the mental and physical integrity molded into this piece, eventually gave me the most satisfying emotion I have ever endured in my life.  I was given the privilege of meeting the judges, three certified master chefs. These words still choke up my throat.  To face these chefs, individuals that know more about the baking and pastry world in a single cell than I do in my entire body, was unbelievable in itself. But to hear that my piece was substantial enough to be held to an olympic standard? The emotion was so, astonishing. Overwhelming. I cried tears of joy for the first time in my life. That is a feeling I wouldn't trade for the entire world <3