Posted on 08/30/2018 9:12:49 AM PDT by 11th_VA
For Alexandria Butler-McDow, 28, going to university didn’t provide the freedom and financial security she'd hoped for. After graduating with an associate’s degree from the California Culinary Academy (CCA) in San Francisco, CA, in 2008, Butler-McDow struggled to find a job that would allow her to support herself and her disabled mother while also paying off her enormous student loan bill.
Hopeful that a more advanced degree would help her make more money and better manage her debt, Butler-McDow went on to pursue a bachelor’s degree in culinary nutrition, concentrating on clinical dietetics at Johnson and Wales University (JWU) in Providence, RI. By the time she had finished her second degree, Butler-McDow was even deeper in debt.
Now, nearly four years after graduating with her second degree, Butler-McDow (better known as Chef Alexandria at Better Taste Productions) is a Los Angeles-based chef and culinary consultant focusing on nutrition and education — and she is still six figures in debt. Though she has defaulted on her loans and deferred some of her payments, the end of this ordeal is still out of her reach. “We are sold the notion that getting an education is what will improve our socioeconomic standing,” Butler-McDow told Refinery29. “My degrees were supposed to bring me out of poverty but they’ve just anchored me.” ...
(Excerpt) Read more at finance.yahoo.com ...
It seems that “life” owes her more.
Interesting that it’s so hard to find a photo of this chef with so much potential....
Answer to that question: Someone who doesn’t know better;who was sold a bill of goods. It does seem like a lot of money to learn to cook & that should have been her first clue. Guess it’s true what P.T. Barnum was reputed to have said.
Adults are adults.
Hey Kit Cat! Long time no talk to.
This girl is a perfect example of today’s media saturated culture.
She had no other vision than what she saw on the tv. For some strange reason, she likely thought she’d have some tv show, or at least some high-paying gig elsewhere.
These poor people are not anchored in reality. They follow pop culture as if it actually means something. It is so sad. This is what happens when you knock the foundation out from under.
Our local community college offers essentially the same thing for $3000 total. Also Great Courses has a culinary chef course.
Mother’s Day in the restaurant industry is the MOST DREADED day of the year!!! People are IDIOTS for going to a restaurant on Mother’s Day service is ALWAYS bad and the food is NEVER top notch, waits are always behind even with reservations, I just could NEVER understand why people want to put their moms through that!!!!
That’s one of the ways to do it - walk into a restaurant and ask for a job. Be prepared to work so hard and at such an insane pitch that you end up doing drink and drugs and ending up in rehab, lol. Difficult career but some people thrive on it.
Sounds like you raised him well. I am willing to bet he is not a bed wetting liberal either!
The community colleges have good culinary schools although a lot of kids then transfer to the big culinary schools like the CIA. But I don’t think you want to eat at a restaurant where the chef’s only knowledge of food comes from a Great Courses course, lol.
Our baby boomer parents.
Another young, impressionable sucker defrauded by the big college/university education lie. They brainwashed her about how successful she’d be and got her real good.
Unless you’re spending your life educating yourself and starting your own business without debt, getting paid much is about who you know and how willing you are to sell your soul to the lefty freak show of robbing others of their money and freedoms.
By George, I think you are right...I think I was going off what another poster wrote...
Like you said, I was worked incredibly hard and did everything from scrubbing pots and pans, to dishwashing, to busing tables, hauling around and tapping kegs for the bar, short order cooking and just about everything else EXCEPT waiting on tables (that is for the real professionals).
Gordon Ramsey wasn't famous back then but it seemed that everybody in the kitchen there was just like Gordon Ramsey on a bad day.
And the alcohol flowed. I was underage at the time but that didn't stop me from getting paper cup after paper cup of beer handed to me from the bar. Many of the cooks were on the harder stuff.
It was quite a culture and only special people can make a career of it.
Maybe not, but I watched the whole series and it’s taught by a chef from the Culinary Institute of America.
https://www.thegreatcourses.com/partners/culinary-arts
That's true but you must choose the curriculum and university wisely. She chose ... poorly.
Yep! It’s really a very hard core macho atmosphere although there are more and more women involved - most of them start their own restaurants to get away from the Mario Batalis, lol.
Were tats important then? This insane chef culture of tattoos is another turn off.
I actually have that course. You learn mise en place which while time-consuming is probably the easiest thing to learn in culinary school.
But you can’t have a career based on that.
Sounds like she could work at an old folks home or a hospital as a dietician but that isn’t huge money. It’s basically head cook.
I’ll bet she doesn’t even know how to make fried Cabbage
and fried apples are beyond her.
I can make both, but not near as good as my daddy.
She will never make biscuits as good as my grandma,
or pear preserves either.
She probably thinks country ham comes from northern Italy.
I met someone very similar to this in a Dave Ramsey “Financial Peace “University”” course a couple years ago. She was 150k in student loan debt for some useless degree.
When it came to part of the course about “paying it forward and charity” AFTER you yourself are out of debt, she was pouring on the tears about how nobody told her how much debt she owed and *gasp*; there would be interest on it. She ran out her deferrals; or at least she said she did. I was pretty convinced she was trolling Dave Ramsey courses looking for a handout seeing that excellent display of acting at just the right time.
I simply told her she would get it paid off, because the Treasury would be leaning on her very soon.
BTW, it was a great course if you follow the simple steps. It got me out of 50K of overall debt and I live debt free today (and yeah, it took a few year of snowballing debt, etc.). If I can’t pay for it with cash, I probably don’t need it or I need to save more. Wouldn’t dream of touching my emergency fund these days; took too long build that up.
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