Mom, I'm not good at fractions.

"I'm an English major."
"Oh, are you going to be a teacher?"

"I'm going to go to culinary school."
"Oh, well aren't you an English major?"

These are the kinds of situations I find myself in about every week when I talk with people about my future. As much as I find the questions are assumptions irritating, the only thing I can do is use this conversations as motivation to accomplish the goals that I have set for myself. Yes, I'm an English major. I'd like to be a writer if I can. More specifically, I want to be a food critic. Thus, I'm going to culinary school.

My mom visited me over Thanksgiving. I didn't have the funds to travel back home so she came to Iowa City. We were discussing my plans for after school here at Iowa. It was such a nice relaxed conversation & she made some very good points about cooking, school, &  my degree.

She pointed out that I needed to assess & realize why math is so important in cooking. I haven't always been a fan of math. I'm not great at math & I become easily frustrated. I need to know why things happen, why certain formulas exist, etc instead of just doing the math problems. My mom taught me from a very young age how to "eye-ball" certain recipes, how to buy food at the store while on a budget by comparing prices & ounces, etc. She told me this past weekend that over the years that my love for cooking has grown & I seem to have forgotten the fact that I hate math. That all fades out of the picture when I'm cooking because I love doing it so much.

I thought this was a really great thing to think about as I'm moving forward with my life.