Going to culinary school is something
I've always wanted to do. This has been a
dream for you know maybe a decade or
more and then I went to medical school
another big passion of mine and, and said
you know I really need to do both. In the
first couple years of medical school
you're sitting in classes you're
learning all day long how to treat
diseases, how the disease's actually come
to be, and then as well as how to prevent
them. And when it came to prevention it
kept coming back to diet. I wanted to
help patients of course take their
medications as prescribed but also learn
how to manage their health at home using
healthy foods, and you know, I I knew I
was a good home cook but I knew that in
order to help patients help themselves
when it comes to diet, if I was gonna be
writing recipes and showing them how to
cook in my office, then I was gonna need
to do something more. So as I started to
figure out how I wanted to combine food
and medicine I was in medical school in
the classroom and realized I had no time
to of course work my way up the kitchen
ladder, you know, but I needed some
professional training because I had none.
So I had to come to culinary school.
I knew I wanted to come to culinary
school here in New York because there's
so much the city offers. There's the
culinary schools, there's medical schools,
research, there's fantastic restaurants
of course. So the most important thing I
was looking at when I was deciding where
to go to school, is I wanted to go to a
reputable school right and I ended up at
ICE because they have so many options
when it comes to scheduling. I knew that
I wanted to work a full-time job and get
some more professional experience and
continue being involved in the medical
field, but I also wanted to come to
culinary school and ICE allowed me to
come on the weekends so it fit into my
schedule, and I couldn't have asked for a
better choice.
And so I was originally going to do some
research at a local medical school and
then I heard about this opportunity to
be a medical student producer for Dr. Oz
and they just combined so many of my
interests in media, in food, in medicine,
in cooking, and it was perfect. I had to
take it. One of my favorite things about the
show is how it combines food and
medicine, of course. We have chefs coming
on the show, even some of my instructors
here, as well as, a bunch of doctors and
they're often coming on for the same
purpose, which is to help make the viewer
healthier through food. So I I found that
it fit very well with with what I want
to do.
What no one tells you about culinary
school is how close you get to your
classmates. You spend a lot of time with
this group of, you know, a dozen or so
people and you become like a family, so
that's definitely been my favorite part.
But also you know it's giving me the
opportunity to cook with things I
wouldn't normally cook with at home, you
know, to make really big sauces, to cook
with really big cuts of meat, you know
and so it's giving me the experience
when it comes to that, and that's what
I've learned here at ICE. That kind of
finesse. A lot of people said this is
awesome and you need to do this and some
of them said this is crazy, they laughed
at me and they you know kind of just
rolled their eyes and what I kind of had
to do was push all that aside and say
this is what's best for my career, this
is going to help my patients in the
future, and I just really need to do this,
and so I went for and I ended up at ICE
and I'm so glad that I did. It's been a
fantastic opportunity, I wouldn't change
it for the world, and I feel like my
dreams are coming true. It's really an honor
to be here.
