Internship: Day 21, 12/14/05

My last day, and many of the staff told me how much they had enjoyed working with me, which was really great. The lunch crew was sad, and gave me big hugs. I’m really sad that I’m leaving, but I spoke with D before I left and he said that they’re definitely going to be restructuring things and should have a permanent position for me early next year. They also invited me to their Christmas party, so I’ll be seeing everybody again on Sunday, which is nice. I also talked to D about what he meant by improving my initiative, and he said that I just need to be a little more assertive about jumping in and doing things without direction, and about volunteering for new projects that I’m interested in. He said that if I come to work there permanently, they’ll definitely push me to do that. I can see where he’s coming from—my personality is definitely on the timid side, especially when I feel that I don’t totally know what I’m doing. But he pointed out that the way you learn is by screwing things up, and that I should be willing to take risks. Point well taken.

I’m really happy with how far I’ve come, during my internship as well as during my first year of school. In one year, I’ve gone pretty much from 0—basic cooking skills, nothing special—to potentially having a job at one of the top restaurants in the city. I feel like I’ve got a very, very long way to go to get where I want to be, but I feel that I’m off to a decent start.

Working at Quake has been a great experience. I really hope that they hire me on, as I feel that I would really be able to continue to grow there.

Internship: Day 20, 12/12/05

A relatively uneventful day. Lunch was fairly busy, and we had a lot of prep to do. We experimented with the new scallop dish which none of us for thrilled with—we all thought it needed some adjusting. I got my final evaluation back from D, and it was mostly good. In both my midterm and this evaluation, though, he indicated that I could use more initiative in the kitchen. I’m not sure what that means, so I’ll have to talk to him about it on Wednesday—my last day!