hit the ground running

When the gazelle awakes in the morning, all it knows is that it must run faster than the fastest lion, or today will be its last day on earth. When the lion awakes, all it knows is that it must outrun the slowest gazelle, or it will starve. So no matter whether you are a lion or a gazelle, you must start your day running. ~ African proverb

It has been told to me that I am to be considered crazy for doing my externship in the same quarter as my final kitchen class. Crazier yet, for taking two of the most difficult classes in the curriculum– Design & Layout, and Managerial Accounting– simultaneously. The fact that I am continung to hold a full time job throughout this must make me positively bonkers.

The other night at work, I was explaining to B. why I could no longer work on Fridays–I have to do my externship* then. She asked me about what I was doing, so I told her some of my responsibilities and whatnot. “So how much are they paying you?”

It was then that I realized that dear, sweet, naive (gag me. more like ignorant) B. thought that I must’ve been making more money there to willingly give up a shift here. I absolutely stunned her with my next remark.

“Well it’s an internship–I don’t get paid anything.”

B.: “WHAAATTTT????? How can they do that? That’s not right.”

While I do agree with her, somewhat, and I feel that I personally would pay an intern/extern for the time they put in, now was not the time to tell her my personal feeling on it because she was obviously oblivious to the entire POINT of an internship. So instead I said, “Well it’s supposed to be a learning experience. What you get out of it isn’t money, but what you learn.” And if I thought it couldn’t get any worse…. “Isn’t that why you’re going to school? To learn?”

It was at this point that I then proceeded to do a mental *headdesk*, and, although by this point it was futile, proceeded to explain that in school, while you learned cooking techniques and knife skills, and how to read recipes, being in a real-world kitchen was an entirely different experience altogether. I don’t remember how the rest of the conversation went–there wasn’t much; all I recall is feeling very drained afterwards. Conversations about how the world works with B. and G. often have that effect on me.