Greetings from Charlotte, NC!

[RedSonya]

Greetings!

Great forum you guys have here! I'm a 33 year old, female, ex-Network Admin who wants to change careers to culinary, and I must say, I'm a bit discouraged by all the "I love my job even though the pay and the hours suck" posts lol! I was hoping to find an enjoyable career that could pay in the $30-$40k range, and the few salary searches I did show sous chefs in that range. Is this not the case? None-the-less, I'm going to give culinary a try and am in the process of enrolling in a culinary arts degree program at a community college here in Charlotte. I also went to the library today and checked out "Becoming a Chef", "Culinary Careers", and "Kitchen Confidential" after seeing two of those on a list of recommended reading on this forum.

Why a career change? Well, I got burned out with being a Network Admin. I no longer felt like dealing with the ever-changing software and hardware updates on top of constant virus threats. Ugh, lol. Also, I'm not ambitious, I much prefer being a worker bee. I also love working with my hands (I was a percussion major in college), and I also like being behind the scenes and providing a service...I just don't want to fix broken things anymore. People are normally agitated when their things are broken...especially computers heh. So, I got to thinking...I actually had fun as a teenager working the grill at McDonald's, and I've watched the Food Network for years, heh, so I thought I would give the culinary arts a try. I hope I'll get a pretty good idea if I'll like it or not by the end of the first semester. Do you guys think so?

Well, thanks for the welcome, and I look forward to joining the discussions!

Red Sonya

[Mezzaluna]

Welcome to Chef Talk RedSonya. Be sure to hang out at the Culinary Students forum and hop over to the main Chef Talk site (cheftalk.com) to read the great articles.

You'll find lots of people in the same boat as you are, so dive into those discussions and get talkin'! Of course please visit all the other forums to share and learn.

Regards,
Mezzaluna