Since I was young, I've loved being in the kitchen with my family. I learned how to make my mom's cookies alone at 7, how to cook family dinner recipes my dad taught me at 11, and eventually how to cook a decent steak and pasta alone at 15. Throughout high school, I took culinary classes but never considered going into the culinary field until I was a Junior. All my life, I truly believed I was meant to work in the medical field, I centered my college education around nursing, taking prerequisite classes for nursing school so I could skip some classes when I transferred to a university. Unfortunately, I was so dissatisfied with my life and school, I had no motivation for it and I ended up failing some classes. One day my family had to plans for dinner, so I threw together something with whatever we had in the kitchen; my dad suggested I look into culinary school. Like many other culinary students, my biggest inspiration has been Anthony Bourdain, even before I chose the CIA. Cooking fulfills me in a way I never thought possible, discovering and learning about new cultures through food is a privilege many people take for granted, however it has become the center of my passion and dedication in culinary school. Anthony Bourdain's lessons and voice is constantly in my head; be a traveler, not a tourist. He's taught me that culture and food are inseparable, you can't enjoy one without enjoying the other. You can't cook pho, butter chicken, pasta, shawarma, without appreciating Vietnam, India, Italy, and the middle east's cultures. I started attending the CIA in California last fall and am currently completing an internship in Curacao as a Chef de Partie. Living in Curacao for the past 3 months has taught me a myriad about myself and who I want to be in my future career as a chef. I started school with the knowledge I wanted to be a yacht chef, and both culinary school and my internship have deepened my desire to search out this career. Being a Chef de Partie has taught me that I'm not a big enjoyer of a la carte service, but rather a fan of inventing a menu and creating my own dishes. Learning about local goods and suppliers, how to adapt to the products available on such a small island instead of relying on large national suppliers like Sysco has been nothing less than fascinating.

My name is Lucy Cross, I am a high school senior at Sequim High School and am also enrolled in a dual credit program at Peninsula College to earn my AA. I am also a bisexual woman. My biggest dream is to become a pediatric nurse and eventually enroll myself into culinary school. I love to cook and bake, and I’m also a volleyball player, I have been for 6 years now. Sequim, Washington isn’t a very progressive town, at least the people there aren’t. It’s littered with hateful people who spread their beliefs into their children, who in turn spread their parents and grandparents conservative thoughts to impressionable teens. I got lucky, though. My parents are not full of hate. They raised me to be full of love and to grow and spread my love for everyone else to feel and see. I never really understood what homophobia looked or felt like until 8th grade during quarantine. I had been friends with a boy, who I thought was wonderful, but it turned out the opposite. One day I was playing volleyball, several months after I had dyed my hair, and my friend came up to me after having not seen me for almost a year, and asked if I liked girls. All I said was “yes”. Because it was true, and I didn’t really do much to hide it. He called me a faggot and walked away. I didn’t talk to him for 3 years. That was the first time in my life where I really understood what it felt like to be hated simply for who I liked, which had nothing to do with my personality or how I treated people, or anything, really. I like girls, and that alone makes me unworthy of the very love I give out? This incident doesn’t matter to me much anymore, anytime someone calls me that word, or tells me I’m going to hell, or anything of that sort, it doesn’t matter to me. I don’t let it change me or who I love. I don’t try to hide myself, because I know that if I do I may not find the person who loves me like I love them. Well, I have found the girl who loves me like I love her. It’s odd, being a little bit in love with your best friend. I can’t ever tell if I love her like I truly want to marry her, or if I love her like she’s my maid of honor. I like to believe she’s both. We aren’t together, I don’t know if we ever will be, but it’s truly a wonderful feeling to know that there’s someone only 10 minutes away that loves me just like I love her. One of my biggest dreams is to have a family. A small one, just me, a partner and a kid. Being bisexual hasn’t impacted that dream much, but just expanded my horizons. I realized my partner doesn’t have to be a man, that my future child could have two moms. I think being part of the LGBTQ+ community has made me a more empathetic and compassionate person, driving me to my decision to become a pediatric nurse.

Ever since I was young, I knew I wanted a job in the medical field. It wasn’t until my sophomore year of high school that I realized I wanted to pursue nursing, specifically pediatric nursing. I’m not quite sure what brought me to that decision, it just clicked. I adore kids, and I all I want is to work in an environment where I can help sick children get better, or make them feel as comfortable and as loved as possible if passing is inevitable. Sometimes when I’m thinking about my future, I daydream about how my life would be as a nurse, and all I can think about is how much I would love my life. Not because of the paycheck, or because of the places I could live, but because I would spend my days helping people, helping children, and that’s what truly makes me happy. I also have grown up having a lot of respect for nurses, having been in the hospital a few times myself or with my family, and seeing how important they are to the structure of a hospital or clinic. Recently I started working in a restaurant with all sorts of different people, one of said people is an ICU nurse with a son. Out of everyone in my workplace, I have the most respect for her. She once was talking about her day, how she worked a 12 hour shift in the ICU, 3 AM to 3 PM, and she still made it to work on time. I knew she was tired, exhausted, and just wanted to go home and see her son, but she worked with nothing but a smile on her face, void of that tiredness. I don’t get to work with her often, but I am in awe of her when I do. My parents often tell the story of my sister and how she had to get flown in a helicopter to a hospital in Seattle right after she was born, some medical condition made the doctors unsure if she would make it. Of course, today she is alive and well, perfectly healthy, but hearing that story get told time after time, hearing the stories of the wonderful staff, the nurses, always made me curious about working in a hospital. Maybe that story is what made me want to be a pediatric nurse, at least I like to think it is. The truth is that I don’t really know or understand why I want to be a nurse. I don’t like math, or science, I’m not very good at it either, but something inside me pushes against all that. I’m more than willing to sacrifice my time so I can study statistics and biology and whatever else I need to become a nurse, because that’s all I really strive for in life. To help children, to be a nurse.