Hello everyone,
The advice I need is career related. In two year's time I am planning on going to culinary school full time. This alone seems like a straight forward, easy discussion but the circumstances are tricky.
I am 34, married six years, holding a full-time well paying job in the computer field. I've been doing this work for nearly 15 years, prior to which I was in the military. I have a happy home life and we live quite comfortably. My stock options will pay off what debt we have and a $50K culinary school education. I have some college which includes higher math, literature, political science, and computer science. Put another way, I have indeed considered the ramifications of pulling up roots, displacing my family, and quiting a financially sound career. Here is some background.
I have become tired of my current work. I've done everything that this career offers from systems work, programming, databases, networks, and so on. It is no longer fun going to work. I have no aspirations to be a suit and tie manager which is the only direction left to go. I don't like sitting on my backside all day or sitting in productivity meetings all day. I like to have people say, "That was a fantastic (fill in the blank)." I can do that cooking.
I love to cook. My kitchen experience beyond the house was in the military where I was a crack shot doing KP. I wasn't a cook though. KP had me prepping, cooking, cleaning, serving, etc, but I was a telecom guy. Over the four years I was in the service I probably racked up six months or more of cumulative kitchen time.
I've read the "literature" by Bordain, Ramsay, and Buford. I've read the story of Loiseau. I study the Pro Chef, Larousse, Escoffier, and McGee. I need my time in the professional kitchen, I know.
Here, then, is the critical question... As a professional cook, what is your home life like?
I know that I will be earning bupkis to start. I know the kitchen is hard work. I know the hours can suck. I know that 15 years in the computer field means exactly zero in the kitchen and I will be starting out as a prep cook. But I also know that 15 years + 4 military means I can work my bollocks off and not complain if chef squishes a plate of food into my chest if I screw it up. For my wife, she is prepared for the change in lifestyle that my salary change would require and she has expressed her concerns over the change.
But are cooks really resigned to have to work 100+ hours, with no benefits and little pay, divorce looming over the horizon, living in a 400 sq ft studio with wife and child, never having a vacation or even a day off, constantly moving from job to job every six months to a year, no friends beyond fellow cooks? What about my wife, do cooks' wives "hang out"?
Is the picture really that grim? Many things I've read preach that a cook's life sucks and the only really happy cooks/chefs (with few exceptions) are those plastered on the Food Network. When does the life of a professional cook change and "having a life" become possible. As cooks, do we willingly give up that world?
I ask with all sincerity and respect since everyone in the profession who is married can help me with a really difficult issue. I don't want to destroy my family just to cook. I can be a slave at my desk and shut the heck up about it before I'd risk losing my wife.
Any advice would be welcome especially that from a married professional cook or chef.
Warmest regards!
The advice I need is career related. In two year's time I am planning on going to culinary school full time. This alone seems like a straight forward, easy discussion but the circumstances are tricky.
I am 34, married six years, holding a full-time well paying job in the computer field. I've been doing this work for nearly 15 years, prior to which I was in the military. I have a happy home life and we live quite comfortably. My stock options will pay off what debt we have and a $50K culinary school education. I have some college which includes higher math, literature, political science, and computer science. Put another way, I have indeed considered the ramifications of pulling up roots, displacing my family, and quiting a financially sound career. Here is some background.
I have become tired of my current work. I've done everything that this career offers from systems work, programming, databases, networks, and so on. It is no longer fun going to work. I have no aspirations to be a suit and tie manager which is the only direction left to go. I don't like sitting on my backside all day or sitting in productivity meetings all day. I like to have people say, "That was a fantastic (fill in the blank)." I can do that cooking.
I love to cook. My kitchen experience beyond the house was in the military where I was a crack shot doing KP. I wasn't a cook though. KP had me prepping, cooking, cleaning, serving, etc, but I was a telecom guy. Over the four years I was in the service I probably racked up six months or more of cumulative kitchen time.
I've read the "literature" by Bordain, Ramsay, and Buford. I've read the story of Loiseau. I study the Pro Chef, Larousse, Escoffier, and McGee. I need my time in the professional kitchen, I know.
Here, then, is the critical question... As a professional cook, what is your home life like?
I know that I will be earning bupkis to start. I know the kitchen is hard work. I know the hours can suck. I know that 15 years in the computer field means exactly zero in the kitchen and I will be starting out as a prep cook. But I also know that 15 years + 4 military means I can work my bollocks off and not complain if chef squishes a plate of food into my chest if I screw it up. For my wife, she is prepared for the change in lifestyle that my salary change would require and she has expressed her concerns over the change.
But are cooks really resigned to have to work 100+ hours, with no benefits and little pay, divorce looming over the horizon, living in a 400 sq ft studio with wife and child, never having a vacation or even a day off, constantly moving from job to job every six months to a year, no friends beyond fellow cooks? What about my wife, do cooks' wives "hang out"?
Is the picture really that grim? Many things I've read preach that a cook's life sucks and the only really happy cooks/chefs (with few exceptions) are those plastered on the Food Network. When does the life of a professional cook change and "having a life" become possible. As cooks, do we willingly give up that world?
I ask with all sincerity and respect since everyone in the profession who is married can help me with a really difficult issue. I don't want to destroy my family just to cook. I can be a slave at my desk and shut the heck up about it before I'd risk losing my wife.
Any advice would be welcome especially that from a married professional cook or chef.
Warmest regards!
