Part 1:
How did you measure the success of the work you did while you were an intern? What did you learn from this? The staff at the Yellow Deli has been ecstatic to have me working with them since I begun, and their appreciation for me has only grown. It's been really refreshing to walk into an environment every day where I am truly appreciated, accepted, and where the work I do is meaningful (to them and to me). Not many restaurants allow 17 year old teenagers to waltz into their business and casually get to work everyday for a month straight. But at the Yellow Deli, not only do I get to do this, but I am happily greeted by each staff member, I have made friendships with half of them, and not an ounce of harsh judgement has come my way about being too young and therefore possibly unfit to work among them in their kitchens. For this reason mainly, I know that the work I am doing as an intern has been highly successful and of much profit to their business. Another reason I know that the work do is done well is that I am always clarifying the details of the task I am being set to do. Even in a basic task like dicing 12 cups of red peppers into a measuring pitcher that measures only in quarts, I asked a co-worker how many quarts equals 12 cups. It's always better to make sure I am completing the task correctly beforehand or during the beginning rather than completing it incorrectly, wasting ingredients and time. Through asking questions about my work, I have learned how important it is to not ignore the specifics of a kitchen task. For example, when a recipe calls for 5 tablespoons of onion powder, the amount that goes in has to be exactly 5 tablespoons. Not a granule over or under. And when scallions need to be chopped 1/2 a centimeter in width, you know its time to get out your ruler because if it's not close, you're redoing the whole bin. On top of that, if you spend an hour perfecting the size of each slice of scallion, I can assure you the staff won't be thrilled that you took so long. This is not to say that I've made any of these mistakes. In fact, I haven't made the staff dissatisfied in the slightest. I work hard and I work fast. Through learning how things need to be done at the deli, I have learned and adapted so I can complete each assignment as close to flawless as possible. I don't mean to sound like I am boasting, in fact, I'd rather that I had made more mistakes by now. I'd like to have been given something with more room for mess-ups. Something other than following recipes off of a paper and working as a pepper (knife work). Nevertheless though, I have been learning more than I know and can only be grateful for my time at the Yellow Deli. How was your work meaningful to your education? As I went over for FOUR paragraphs long above this prompt, my work at the Yellow Deli has been extraordinarily meaningful to my education. You see, in just over a year, I will be headed to yet another kitchen. One big kitchen that is divided into hundreds of them which all double as classrooms. That's right, I'll be headed off to culinary school. I don't know if you've ever heard anything about cooking school, but if you haven't, it is not a walk in the park. It is one of the harshest environments ever where you are not treated as a human, but a dog. If you dare make a mistake, you will be verbally attacked until you get it right. If your souffle (one of the hardest pastries to master) fails to rise, you get to enjoy a 2 minute lecture/assault in front of the class about the failure you just set before your professor. Then, when it and class is over, you can run home and cry for about 10 minutes until it's necessary that you bake souffle after souffle for eventual mastery until 2 am (which is when fish class starts). Culinary school is all about being yelled at so you have enough incentive to prove your professor's words wrong. To show them that you CAN make a goddamn souffle. But hey, as tough as it is, at least you'll learn. For these reasons, I wish to go into culinary school with as much knowledge as possible about the culinary arts. Doing so will spare me shame and earn me time. If I know how to julienne carrots before I walk through those doors, I will be sparing myself shame for when my professor asks me to and I don't know how. I will be sparing myself hours of sitting in my dorm room kitchen with 10 sacks of carrots working my hands sore just to finally learn to slice them perfectly julienne. And while I've been on my internship, This is what I have been doing. I have been sparing myself future pain and earning myself more sleeping time in the future. At internship, I have been learning about the culinary arts, the flow of a restaurant, the level of attention needed towards the specifics of every task, the need for speed, and far more. Nothing is greater than knowing you are doing rewarding work for yourself and I am more than proud to be doing so at the Vista Yellow Deli. Part 2: What new appreciations did you develop while working as an intern? Why? For the first week or so that I've been interning at the Yellow Deli, one of the only thing I was working on was prep work. I was solely a prepper chopping bins after bins of vegetables and fruits, washing, food processor-ing, dicing, slicing, and mincing all of the ingredients needed for salads, soups, sandwiches, and more. The heavy emphasis on monotony in this first week (and even in the rest) is what forced me into a sort of ultimatum: I could be annoyed by the redundancy of my work and claim that slicing dozens and dozens of apples isn't going to help me as a chef any further, or I could be grateful that I am getting to slice dozens of apples in a restaurant kitchen at age 17 and take note of the fact that practice makes perfect. I could either love it or hate it. The reality is that with each apple I am cutting, I am, in some way, becoming a better chef. Sure, standing and cutting each apple exactly the same isn't that exciting, but there are more benefits from the task than there are negative factors and I am happy to have taken appreciation for my work rather than hatred. What qualities or characteristics did you see in the people around you that you want to develop in yourself? Why? The staff at the Yellow Deli is kind. That's it. I want to be more kind. More, nice and caring to others in my everyday life. Working in a kitchen, you may have expected me to aspire to be as undaunted, valiant, or knowledgeable as my co-workers. But that is not exactly what the Yellow Deli restaurant, in specific, is about. The workers there aren't professional chefs. They know darn well how to prepare food, but the restaurant's mission isn't about food. It's about community. It's about being there for each staff member as family and creating a place for the city of Vista to enjoy good food and spend time with family and friends. If you aren't aware, the Yellow Deli is a large chain with sites across the country and outside North America as well. It is run solely (with the exception or me) by a religious community that some call cult-like, but that I now know isn't . While I myself am agnostic, I don't and never have denied that religion has a way or bringing people together and teaching people how to live by core morals. I have seen this first hand in the staff at the Yellow Deli. They take almost nothing for granted, and are ever so kind to each other (including me). It is nice to be treated with respect, so naturally, I strive to replicate this into relationships that I have with others. I understand that a large problem in our modern society (and especially in Millennials and younger) is that we, as humans, bring each other down more than we do support, love, and appreciate them. I have more recently taken note of the fact that I don't have a lot of true friends. I have a couple solid friends to whom I have known for years and I have recently understood why we have such a strong friendship. Relationships take effort on both ends. You have to treat the other person kind from the start and hope they do so in return. A problem that I have had is that either the other person or I haven't treated each other with enough respect. And when the other person sees this, they or I gradually float away from that negativity. Most of the people of newer generations value their social media and the relationships they have over the internet more than real, true, ones. It's far easier to drift off into your phone than it is to maintain a solid conversation with somebody, and because of this, many of us haven't given ourselves the chance to learn the demands of upholding a relationship. The staff at Yellow Deli community is all off the grid and, in them, I see true character quality, and among them, I see valuable relationships. So, recently I have been working more on censoring my words and heeding the kindness of each sentence I speak. I have no need to bring people down. It won't make me feel better and it'll only limit their success. It was never a conscious thing I did to hurt others. I didn't even realize the effects of my actions or words. I only did it by nature of seeing it done to me and around me. I now see that there are wonders that a little positivity can do , and I want to be the person who makes that change. I want to lead by example.
3 Comments
Taylor
6/1/2018 12:07:47 pm
Hello Rayna,
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Aleida
6/4/2018 10:36:40 am
Rayna, this is amazingly thoughtful. Thank you for being so vulnerable and sharing your experiences and feelings.
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6/4/2018 12:19:19 pm
This is really cool that you can recognize that you want to do something like being more kind. This experience also seems very cool because you didn't get to start off just cooking food or making deserts, you had to start from the bottom by prepping your food and you worked your way up. This seems really cool. Best of Luck!
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Rayna ChavezHello, welcome to my 11th grade internship blog! I've had a passion for cooking since I was 9 years old, so I knew that for my school-required internship I wanted, more than anything, to intern at a business in the culinary field. Fortunately, I was able to land an internship at a health-conscious restaurant in Vista, CA called The Yellow Deli. Read about my once-in-a-lifetime educational experience here. Business Info:My MEntor: Laura Franks (Neviah)
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