By Dessa Bayrock (The Cascade) – Email
Print Edition: June 19, 2013
Last week hundreds of students shook Mark Evered’s hand and received an expensive piece of paper as part of UFV’s three convocation ceremonies.
As one of the students that crossed the stage this year, I can attest that it’s terribly exciting and drop-dead boring, an ecstatic and anticlimactic dream come true for graduates and, I imagine, their parents.
Stepping out of the darkened arena and into the blinding overcast ambience of the outdoors felt like leaving the proverbial nest, jettisoning out of a comfortable university uterus and into the brightly frightening real world.
I was suddenly filled with terror, holding a degree that felt suddenly and suspiciously flimsy. What have I learned that is really supposed to help me? I thought. What if the real world EATS ME ALIVE?
But as English majors often do in times of stress and high emotion, I found comfort in a metaphor.
Master Chef.
I was just as surprised and skeptical as you are, but hear me out.
For those unfamiliar with the program, Master Chef is a fairly run-of-the-mill cooking show: competitors battle to create tastier, more innovative and better-looking food than their fellow contestants while enduring the constant criticism of chef Gordon Ramsay.
For the purpose of this metaphor, you are the determined and terrified contestant. You long to be a master chef, but will you ever break out of the constant strain, stress and adrenaline? You’re blindsided by orders to cook dishes you’ve never heard of and correctly use combinations of ingredients you’ve never thought about, not to mention somehow keep on the good side of that backstabbing bitch in the corner who brags she used to be in a gang. Your head alternately spins and aches, and above all you pray you won’t burst into tears when Gordon Ramsay looks at you.
Life was so easy before I joined this show! You might think to yourself. Why did I ever leave my old life behind? What was I thinking?
But even if you stay in your own comfortable kitchen, each of us has a Gordon Ramsay in our own heads. His clever and caustic British jabs will be with you no matter where you are.
So there is no choice; you get up every morning and walk in the doors of the Master Chef set and you put your game face on. Today is going to be the day you make Gordon Ramsay proud. Today is the day you shake Mark Evered’s hand.
And even though you feel like your heart is going to beat out of your chest like a bird escaping a cage, you realize that even if the kitchen is a hell of a lot bigger, it’s still a kitchen. You have a stove and an oven, a sink and a dishcloth, all kinds of cutlery and serving utensils. You’ve been cooking all your life, and cooking in the big leagues of reality TV might be scarier, sure, but it’s still cooking. Everything you know still applies. Don’t let anything burn, right? Don’t forget to put the vegetables on to boil. Keep that sauce warm right up until you put it on the plate, because there’s nothing worse than a cold sauce.
I’m making these facts up, because in reality I know very little about cooking. But the metaphor stands: the things learned at university are meant to serve us well in the real world – don’t drink coffee unless you want to stay awake. Start projects well in advance. Find study partners you can trust with your life, and more importantly, your test scores.
Don’t break the yolks. Don’t let the rice cook too long.
Always proofread your work. Get at least six hours of sleep every night.
The lessons you have learned will serve you well, whether you’re trying to win Master Chef or start a career, whether you graduated last week, in 1998, or plan to next year. Just keep doing what you’re doing, one step at a time – it’s high time you learned to cook more than Kraft Dinner anyway.
