Cooking up a career

I work as a line cook at a restaurant here in Bloomington, and when I told my two co-workers about my upcoming graduation, one of them asked me what I had studied. \n"English and history," I told her, with a certain amount of pride. (And why not?) The other asked me how many years I had spent in college, and I showed him four fingers, still holding my head high. \n"You went to college for four years and all you got to show for it is a degree in English?" Bear in mind, this is coming from someone who was kicked out of the Navy.\nI know what's coming -- the "t" word. Before he has the chance to ask, the other co-worker, who hails from Mexico, answers the question. "You must teach," she says, as if the matter were closed to discussion. This is perhaps the 30,000th time I've had this conversation. "What? You're an English major who doesn't want to teach? I don't get it."\nTeaching is an extremely noble profession -- probably the noblest -- and part of me actually wouldn't mind doing it if it didn't mean working with kids. The truth is, it just isn't for me. And for a long time, I didn't have an answer to the question of what I really did want to do. At various points in the last few years, my answer has changed from freelance magazine writer to Great American Novelist to screenwriter before finally landing on my current answer, which explains why I work as a line cook.\nThat's right, I want to be a chef! This occurred to me as I prepared one of my first meals from scratch two years ago in which the outside of a chicken thigh was burnt almost beyond recognition while the inside was miraculously and disappointingly raw. The meal was totally inedible but preparing it was life-altering. Flash forward two years and an entire shelf of cookbooks later and here I am, still thoroughly convinced this man's place is in the kitchen. \nPart of the beauty of cooking, for me, is the confluence of art and science. For example, if you bite into a raw onion, you'll wish you hadn't. But if you cut it up and put it into a hot pan with some melted butter, over 100 chemical processes turn it into something so sweet and delicious you can't pile it high enough on a burger. \nIn his book, "Kitchen Confidential: Adventures in the Culinary Underbelly," Anthony Bourdain likens working in a restaurant kitchen to being a hand on a pirate ship -- unrefined people (society's outcasts, even) working in a frenzied environment surrounded by knives. In my limited experience, I have found his observation to be absolutely true, but I mean that in a good way. I'm willing to bet there's more camaraderie and laughter in our kitchen than in most break rooms. At the end of the day, I'm happy to be on board.\nThe gap between English major and pirate/cook seems like a significant one, but that's not necessarily so. Interestingly, my boss at the restaurant, the executive chef, graduated from IU. What is his degree in? English. Bourdain and others could tell you there's plenty of money to be made writing books about food that don't contain a single recipe.\n Take heart, English majors. Perhaps some of you will go on to be teachers, but for those who want a different course, remember Steven Spielberg, Clarence Thomas and Paul Simon were English majors who probably had to explain they had something in mind other than the classroom. An English degree might not teach you how to make hors d'oeuvres, but it'll make you more amusing at the cocktail party where you eat them.