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 ...
Someone who loves being a student the easy way and avoiding having to do the hard work.
She could have also Incorporated a business degree at Johnson and Wales.....her issue isn't finding a job....her issues go well beyond that.
In talking to them if I had a nickel for every time I heard them say "I'm $100,000 in debt" I'd be living in the south of France.
She has lots of issues that don’t show up in this article. For one, she is not telling the whole story about her debt. There must be far more to her debt than just an associates degree. I think she either folded more debt into her school debt, like living expenses. Or she folded in other unsuccessful schooling into her debt. Like she may have started in one major and finished in another. Or even moved schools.
Also, as you point out, she can’t find a job. So, the school is not helping her. Or she is very unwilling to take several jobs. The truth is that schools help their best students. She is clearly not one of them. But even if she did not get her schools help, she is lazy. Jobs are everywhere. And she can’t get or hold one, so she is lazy or a terrible employee. A college degree can’t help someone who does not help themselves. She should try to get a job at a prison or school cafeteria. That way she could get in a government union and never be fired.
I’m just a glorified mr.fixit / techno-flunky that took a few classes in computer repair.
That was in 99 going to 00. It took a few years to make it pay off. For about 6 years, I have a job that pays well, low stress, and an office.
I’m looking at finally taking network and security plus initially. People seem to care about certs now. I have plenty of experience from manufacturing land.
She is living in SoCal. Got to have considerable cash flow or live simply to live there. If she moved to Reno she could get a food industry job and have half the living expense.
The fact that she’s under a concrete truck of school debt is now just fact. Live and learn. But now she needs to wise up and get a plan.
“California Culinary Academy “..... McDonald’s is hiring.
What a stupid over saturated low potential field she has chosen.
Go to truck driving school instead.
Cooking is a vocation - like any talent. People have to love to cook and serve people. If you read books by the great chefs like Jacques Pepin or Gordon Ramsey, you’ll see they put in years of working in terrible conditions enduring terribly long hours. Ramsey went to catering school first, Pepin used the French apprentice system.
That writer should come to the Nashville area
Unemployment if you really want s job is probably zero
I’m paying 12-18 an hour at car washes cash 1099 money rain or shine
And having hard time keeping half of them
She HAS a job as a chef, and calls herself one.
See post #79.
And to make her situation worse, she elected to stay in the California coastal area where there is no shortage of ‘high end’ cooks.
ROFLMAO !!!
She obtained a degree from Johnson and Wales——a very good school.
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Note to Ms. Butler-McDow, should you or anyone who knows you sees this : If you’re really interested in a full-time job try applying to nursing homes/skilled nursing facilites. Most are in dire need of talented folks with your skill set. Pay won’t be that great, but it’s honest work and if you’re any good at it you’ll be doing a lot of good for folks who really need it.
4 year tour in Air Force get paid and be a cook with skill
She could have gotten a four-year cooking school, and paid to do it, as a Culinary Specialist (that’s what they now call a cook) in the Navy.
I see the problem right there.
Learning how to cook is not necessarily a bad thing -- but paying $100,000 to learn how to do it is.
It's like paying Porsche 911 money for a 6 year old Toyota Camry. A 6 year old Camry is not a bad car -- but for $100,000?
Easy availability of school loans just inflates the price.
And someone with a two year cooking degree and no experience is NOT a "chef". The title "chef" is reserved for someone with a lot of experience who actually knows the ropes. A restaurant kitchen is like a ship and there are ranks of hierarchy all the way down to the dishwasher. People have to earn their rank, the chef most of all. It takes years of work and experience before someone can claim the title of "chef".
It’s a very marketable skill if she’s a good cook.
It is, just get your ass out of RI.
No connections means it doesn’t work well with others.
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