Ciao!

Welcome, welcome to my wonderful new blog. I’ve gotten tons of requests to start one so here I am, writing to you about my Italian culinary adventures. I’ll get into the daily school details in my next post but for now just a (not so) little explanation about how I ended up on this crazy path.

If towards the end of my senior year of high school someone told me that I would end up where I am today, I would have asked what drugs that person was taking. NEVER in my wildest dreams or fantasies would I have thought that I would end up in culinary school. It was never part of the plan, not that there was much of one left anyway from the past few years. I always pictured myself spending the “best 4 years of my life” at one college where I would go to every football game, maybe join a sorority, graduate with a good GPA, find a job where I would have to straighten my hair and get made up everyday and that’s it.

Obviously, things have changed since then. I had a very different mindset about college, life, and relationships when I was in high school. Granted I was only 17 when I graduated but I still had VERY strong opinions about everything (as anyone who went to high school with me and had AIM could tell you). As a perfect example, I was extremely embarrassed by the thought of attending community college after my first year at Lafayette. I thought it was for losers, failures, and burnouts just as I believed the same about trade schools such as culinary school. I thought it was a joke. End of story.


And now I think that part of growing up means learning to prove oneself wrong. I’ve done that many times. I’ve failed many times. I’ve alienated myself from people in order to make them miss me more. That didn’t work. I went off to one of the top liberal arts schools in the country because obviously everyone who goes to a top school gets a great job and makes lots of money and lives a happy life. That seemed like such a smart thing for me to be thinking and saying when I was younger. But now I realize it’s not just naïve; it’s completely and utterly idiotic.

As I’ve said many times before, I don’t believe that a piece of paper can tell a person what someone is about. You can’t read passion, perseverance, integrity, personality, and enthusiasm on a page of numbers. I think what I like about this industry is that you have to really prove what you’re worth. Grades on a resume are nice, but what about skill? What about pure, raw talent? Talented people with a good attitude will go far in this industry. I feel you actually have a chance to prove your skills, not just show off how high your IQ is. Passion is the key word to me. I’m a very passionate person. Whether it’s for people, sports, food, music, or anything else, I’m very passionate and I feel things a lot more than I think the average person does. And once I throw myself into something, it’s very hard to stop me.

Unfortunately it seemed like my passion for everything (except perhaps drinking) just seeped out of me soon after I went to college. Somewhere around the haze of confusion called freshman year, I lost sight of…everything. Without any clue what I wanted to major in and absolutely no direction, I was simply there. I stopped playing tennis after my first semester, rarely spoke to my brothers, stopped caring about school. Maybe I was just so caught up with the overwhelming change of being in college, away from home, away from my family, my friends, and everything familiar that I didn’t realize how much I had changed. There were so few things that I really cared about. I even stopped writing in my diary and playing the piano, the two main outlets and only constants in my life.

I spent that summer following my first disastrous year at school participating in a program in Greece. You’ll hear me talk about this experience in many other posts I’m sure but the details are irrelevant now. I met many amazing Greek Americans from all over the country and upon returning home, felt like I was ready to simply start over. I did quite well my first semester at Nassau but I decided that I was tired of being in school and I actually told my mom that I wanted to drop out . “What are you going to do?” she said. Of course I had no answer.

Parts of my time at home are still a blur to me but I finally managed to adjust to living at home and I decided to take full advantage of going to a community college. In the end there were several things I came to realize during that time, many of which actually stemmed from my love of music. I started taking classes I had never taken before - communications, public relations, marketing. And I realized that I was good at those subjects. The fire in me that was hiding had finally ignited and I began to enjoy school again. It was something I had just completely forgotten. I used to love going to school and learning new things. I don’t understand how I could have lost the ability to want to learn new things.

Then during my third semester at Nassau, my public relations class took a field trip to a local Live Nation concert venue and something clicked inside my brain. I experienced for the first time that Newton-like sensation of being hit on the head with an apple. I finally figured it out. I would combine my communications skills with music and do something I enjoy. I went for an interview and ended up getting the internship the day before my 20th birthday. It was the best present I’ve ever gotten in my life. My family was so proud of me - they all saw life in me again.

And so I continued taking courses in the communications field while interning at Live Nation. I’ve heard horror stories about internships, but I had a wonderful experience where I was. I wrote nearly 30 press releases during my time there and everyone treated me very well. I have absolutely nothing bad to say about my time there because it was such a joy knowing that I was actually an important part of a company.

I followed that internship with one at a record label that summer. It was interesting and there were some really cool perks (rooftop concerts, anyone?) but even then there was that nagging in my brain telling me that not everything was quite right. And now I know what it was. It was the feeling that I was trapped. Because the thought of going into an office and sitting in a cubicle staring at a computer all day is frightening. I don’t believe I’m a terribly conventional person and I don’t see myself living in a boring routine day in and day out.

Even so, I ended up going to Quinnipiac for a semester or so because they have a terrific communications program. And yet all I did while I was there was cook and entertain. I hated going to classes once more and I took a lot of time to reconsider my life. If I wasn’t passionate about what I thought I wanted to go into, what on earth would happen down the road when I would start looking for a job? I want to be happy for the rest of my life. I’ll work hard and get my hands dirty, whatever it takes. I just want to be happy and passionate forever. I don’t EVER want to feel that same hopelessness that I felt before. I don’t want to feel like I’m just a waste.

I actually feel, for the first time in my life, like being selfish. I want to do things for myself. I want to do things for me and me alone. There’s always been something holding me back. A friend who needs help or a general desire to do something nice for someone else. I’ve done these things selflessly, simple things like remembering a friends birthday or staying up late at night just to talk someone through a problem or simply being there to listen when no one else will no matter what the cost was to me and my own well being. Not to say I won’t do those things anymore, but I’m ready to take on the world and take care of myself first and foremost. It’s time for me to grow up and experience life for myself without anyone’s help and to do all the things I want to do.

The greatest advice I’ve ever received is “think about something you love to do and find a way to make money from it.” So that’s what I’m setting out to do. That’s where this program is taking me. What I realize now when I thought I was discovering gravity wasn’t necessarily that music was going to be my career, rather exactly what said advice was telling me to do – that I could pick something I love to do and turn it into something significant. Cooking may not be important to other people, but that’s okay because it is to me. It allows me to be creative by turning some random ingredients into a masterpiece. I’ve always loved cooking and entertaining. My house was always full of friends and my mom and I were constantly feeding them all. I think that people need to really take the time to realize what’s important, what matters to them, and figure out where it can take them. Do I know exactly where I’ll be even a year from now? Absolutely not, but I’m doing something that I love and I know that doors are going to be opening up for me soon enough.

I think one of my greatest epiphanies was something I wrote in my diary a few months ago just before I started at the ICA. I was beginning to second guess myself once more and was wondering if the music/communications industry really was the best place for me. Everyone said that they saw the light bulb turn on once I got my first internship and truly, I was the happiest I had been during my time at home at that point. But during one night of thinking I wrote, “I don’t want the light bulb turned on. I want to sweep away the ephemeral feeling of joy, the fakeness of an electric passion. I want the sun’s eternal light to shine above my head wherever I go.” And as cheesy as it sounds, I feel like the sun is turned on and I’m ready to head into the heat of the kitchen and work as hard as I can to achieve perfection.
Italy is one of my favorite countries in the world and I feel just so blessed and lucky to have this opportunity to be able to combine my love of cooking, traveling, and all things Italian into one. It’s taken a long time and lots of frustration for me to get to where I am today. I’ve already been to three different colleges, not counting the two summers I spent abroad in Greece and Cyprus at universities there. I begged my parents to let me do this program because I told them that for once I actually intended to see something through. And I know I’m going to because I really feel like at this point in my life all I need to do is reach. And simply believe, just keep believing in myself.

So here I am, in one of my favorite places in the world, surrounding myself with amazing people and doing all of the things that I love. I’m being quite honest and saying all this because it’s important that people understand where I’m coming from, what I’ve been through, and how much I’ve changed. I know what I like, I know what I’m good at and I’m ready to finally see things through. I used to depend on other people to do things for me. I just expected someone to take my hand and guide me through life. But the past few months have taught me that the only way you can go through life is by figuring things out for yourself, no matter how long it takes or whatever road it takes you down. Nobody can tell you what path to take. That path is before you and you alone. Nobody can tell you what path to take. That path is before you and you alone. At last I truly feel like I’m walking down my own road towards a foreseeably bright future.
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Sorry about all of the self-reflection and random memories. I promise my other posts will actually be about food. But for now, this is all I have to say. I’m going to try to post everyday but I can’t make any promises. Subscribe and comment on as many things as possible because it will make me want to write more. Buona notte for now…

~Elena Nicole~

PS - I love writing almost as much as I love prosciutto...and that's saying something!