Back to school a joy when you're an adult

So, some 30 years after I last did this (to this extent... I took and passed a Canadian Red Cross Emergency Medical Responder course that involved some 130 hours of classes, spread over three months, a few years back), I am back to school with all the rest of the kids.

In my case, I started chef school last evening. The course, given by the St. Pius X Culinary Institute, will keep me busy five evenings a week until the fall of 2011, a total of 1,400 hours of study. It’s funny to me that I am back in school again... so funny I half expect late comic Rodney Dangerfield to appear and start taking jabs at me. When I was last a legitimate student, back in university, I wasn’t a particularly good one. I skipped classes, studied for exams and wrote papers the day before... in short, I was more of a failure at it than a success. My one joy was writing for Concordia University’s since-defunct Loyola News, which helped propel me into a long-lived career as an oft- published freelance writer, so I guess that was something.

But school? Never grabbed me.

So here I am, the ultimate poster boy for adult ed... and living proof that education is wasted on the young. As my brain ages, it yearns to suck up information like a sponge. Now THAT part I understand. I was always eager to learn in my youth, it was the constant battle to prove oneself via exams that I detested. I suppose the pressure was too overbearing for me, but leave me to my own devices and allow me to simply learn and I was great at that.

I discovered last evening that our leader, Chef Richard, would be testing us from time to time and that we had, horrors of horrors.... an oral presentation next week. We have to interview a local chef of our choosing and then report out findings back to the class. Oral presentations were once anathema to me. I would actually drop classes if I found out that there was one hidden away in the class curriculum, like a panther waiting to pounce. But as I get older, that doesn’t scare me anymore.

There are far worse things in life than oral presentations... like oral cancer! I jest here, but when you think about it, it’s true. When you are a teen, everything on the horizon looms so large and you take everything so seriously. After marriages, a plethora of bad bosses, daily life struggles... hey, an oral exam is a downright pleasure.

And you know what? So is school. Now, I take courses that will benefit me and that I WANT to take. Gone with the wind are peer and parental pressure, battling my fellow students for grades and all the various stresses that come with being young and uncertain. Now, I am subjecting myself to this heavy schedule of work during the day and classes till 10 every night, five days a week, quite willingly. It’s a chance for me to assume a new career once I graduate, a second chance, really.

There’s only one thing that could possibly happen that will take everything I wrote
above and toss it out a window. Chef Gordon Ramsay.

If HE shows up at some point as a chef/teacher-in-residence, all bets are off.