Um, well that's just really unfair,
I'm like awful clumped up here. How am I supposed to follow that? Um, thank you so
much. Thanks everyone. I have I've been doing this, my name is
Jodie Duryea, I'm with the hospitality and tourism program. And I've been teaching
here for 12 years. Before this I taught five and a half years and I teach
cooking. I'm a chef. I went to CIA. I'm have 10 years New York
restaurant experience and teaching is way different. (laughs) So I came in, my
first teaching job was teaching future chefs. And then I came here and I'm
teaching people that will maybe have kitchens in their field so it's required
class and some of them are excited to take it some of them not so much. Some of
them feel like this a waste of their time. So one of the first things I try to
do is explain that this is the most important class they'll ever take - sorry to
all of - you but it is. It's the class that you can use the rest of
your life. Everybody has stuff that they teach that you're gonna learn
for the rest of your life. Everybody. But I literally am teaching you how to feed
yourself. So... you know, even if you don't ever think you're gonna cook again it's gonna come
in handy someday. And so I try to approach it that way.
Like hey, this isn't rocket science, this isn't calculus, this isn't...
everyone has the capacity to learn this. And one of the basic things I try to
teach them are knife skills. So how to hold a knife; how to cut things up; cuz
once you do that it makes everything so much easier. You know, once you get those
basic things down everything just kind of falls into place.
So thanks to C.L.E.A.R. and Vishal I have this great library of cooking videos
which demonstrates step by step everything. I have, you know, I've been
doing this a while so I can explain it. I have pictures. I have videos.
I have the first cooking class I literally do it on a camera in the
kitchen on a screen and they follow along with step by step by step and I'm
like surely... This.. They will get this right? This is okay here-we-go. No. No. No. And so week
after week I show them, week after week, how do you cut an onion. Week after week I'm
like come on this is it. Come on you can do this. How do you hold a knife? How do
you do this. This is doable. Come on. Try it. I know it's awkward. Try it. It's awkward.
Try it. It's the only way to get past the awkwardness is to do it. (sighs) So, well, I don't know,
six or seven years into this I'm getting a little disheartened. I'm feeling
a little bit like a failure. I'm really thinking like maybe it's time to go back
to restaurants. Maybe this has become... maybe I'm not any good at
this. I don't know. I can't, you know, what what else can I do?
And so I'm like this one of those moments. I'm just so low. I'm just, you
know, there was, I remember one place I was living in there was a hurricane
coming I was lower than that, you know, I was
just like (sighs) And so I get up out of my desk at Chilton Hall and I walk over the Union
and it's a beautiful day out and I'm like, "Okay. Come on. Let it go. Let it go.
It's okay. You're not a failure. It's good. It's okay."
And think of the person that had the knife phobia, that you, by the end,
they knew how they could cut an onion and they could use a
knife and it was okay. Think, "It's okay." ... And I'm like not buying it.
Yeah. I'm just not buying it and suddenly they're in the Union there is an old
student of mine, like she graduated a few years ago - she just was back - I don't even
remember why she was back at the Union for some unknown reason. She's just there.
And she's like, "Duryea!" I'm like, "Hey! How are you?" I won't tell you her name,
"Hey!" And we give a big hug and she's like, "Guess what, I taught everyone
in my family how to cut an onion. Even my grandmother cuts an onion the
way you taught me how!" And I went, "(Sighs) Okay..." So sometimes one of the things that, you
know, my chefs, my history professors, my philosophy, everybody
that I've ever taught has made me, who has ever taught me, has made me who I am
today but it didn't mean that in that class I got it.
And so that's one of the things that I try to remember it's not they don't have
to get it while I was looking at him because that kind of pressure isn't
nerve-wracking for everybody, so, but eventually hopefully they'll know how to
do this and everything. I just had another student that came back. His
girlfriend's in my class and he came back and he like kind of
shadowed me all day and he's now working as a Sous Chef, in a hotel, down
in Frisco. And so they may in my class say I'm never going to do this again. I
don't care about this. But as I've come to learn, you know what I said, oh so
many years ago, in my arrogance, "I'm never gonna teach." So I try to tell
them that too - hey I said I was never going to teach and now I have been teaching
for 17 years and I couldn't be happier, most of the time. (laughs) So don't give up and
believe and, whatever, wherever you are take what you can because you don't know
what you're gonna end up doing you're only 18 or 19 or 53 and who knows where
you're gonna end up, so, thank you. (Applause)
you