About MeHad someone asked me where I thought I was going to end up after college, the last place I thought I would say would be back at college. Even less so that I would be back at college for a career I had never had a prior interest in. From a family of bodybuilders, personal trainers, and nutritionists, hanging up my work out belt for a whisk, was greeted by shock and doubt from the Scaralia household.
“Why?” –was the initial response. “Did you think about it?” –came with the application process to Johnson and Wales. But my favorite reaction came from my brother when he threw his head back and laughed, “Baking and Pastry? You’ll just eat everything.” I was on my way off campus when I made the decision. I was getting out of college with a triple minor in Human Services, Art, and Behavioral Health Science with a steady major in Physical Activities and Disabilities. I had a job lined up and waiting for me to complete my last couple experience based credits. Everything was coming easily and swiftly my way with hardly a bump in the road. Coasting. The most pleasant type of coasting with a future clear as crystal on my fingertips. And then an anvil in the shape of Achalasia rocketed out of the sky and drilled me into the earth. This rare disease knocked me off my clear cut path and the coasting ended. For two years I was unable to focus, unable to walk, unable to work, unable to study, and before anything- unable to eat. Cap fulls of baby food became my only sustenance. Sucking on ice cubes quenched my thirst. Food became my every thought while labs fumbled for a way to diagnose me. I dreamed food in the night and then in the waking day. With so much time off of my normally workaholic based schedule, baking and cooking for my room mates transitioned into my favorite pass time. Where I could not taste what I baked, I made up with by surveying my friends every opportunity I had. Achalasia is my ultimate curse, but I can’t say for certain that I would have ever found life in culinary school without it. Had it not been for the medical leave that took my out of my last career path indefinitely, Culinary Arts would not even have become a blip on my radar. As it is, I no longer set out each day to teach Special Education PE, a room filled with laughing and screaming students. Instead, I essentially wake up in the morning for ice cream class. And I think we can all scream for ice cream. |