Laurel Meadows 

My Family is a Well-Oiled Machine               

As the end of my second year at Midwest Culinary Institute rapidly approaches I find myself reminiscing and re-living the things that I have done and seen in the past twenty months.  With the help of my chef instructors and fellow students, I, or we, have been well groomed and trained.  Countless amounts of knowledge and skills have been ingrained into our souls. We are taught to look like chefs, to talk like chefs, and most importantly to cook like real chefs.  We live and breathe everything that we have ever learned here and in the end we have become a force to reckon with.  But one of the biggest parts I will miss about MCI is my family.  I have attended classes with the same students for almost two years.  We lean on each other and provide support.  We help one another if someone flounders.  And most importantly, we are brutally honest with one another.  We know how one another cooks and we know everyone’s strengths and weaknesses.  Together we are able to accomplish great things and I am so greatly honored to have met and worked with these wonderful people.  These are the people that I will be entering the industry with and who better to be in the thick of it all then with your family.  My family is a well-oiled machine.  This is our time and we have been taught everything we need to rise to the top.  We will take this life and make something amazing out of it. We will help each other along the way, even after school has ended, and in ten or twenty years, these people, my family, will be at the top and I am so proud to say that I knew and worked with all of them.