From a young age my father, a forthcoming Le Cordon Bleu graduate, would prepare delicious and breathtaking meals at the drop of a hat for our family. Through high school and college I found it commonplace to discuss the brilliance of butter, the magic of salt, or even the marvel of bread with my mostly disinterested friends. I had notions to one day go to culinary school, but vaguely in the future at some point. I thought I knew food. Then I discovered how wrong I was.
Sitting on the Gulf of Mexico one day last spring, I looked to see one of the restaurant’s tugboats swiftly heading in with what became a plate of newly shucked oysters, shining from a bed of parsley at the end of my waitresses arm. Despite many a vicarious foray into the culinary world via my father, I’d never before been here, staring at a food that is at times gloriously celebrated by refined pallets and at others snidely dismissed with blatant ignorance. Determined not to personify the latter, I picked up the monster, sprinkled it with lemon, toasted to my friends and swallowed without hesitation. By the time my senses caught up to me, I was already smiling. I had been awakened by the sight and smell of the meat, by the flavor and texture of the ocean, and by the sound and weight of the shells that fell seamlessly from my hand to a rapidly emptying plate. It was a life-changing moment, a truly revolutionary experience.
Those Apalachicola oysters opened my eyes to a new world beyond what I thought I knew about food. My passion for food and learning makes me want to reach even further. My next step is to embrace and master the essentials of cooking, the basics, and the raw and unadorned reality of culinary arts to make my eternal passion a reality.

…for the application to the French Culinary Institute in Manhattan, NY. see, Journeymen have other interests and are humans, too!!! also, any revisions/comments would be really cool.