Paying Off a Degree I Do Not Use

I hope & pray some of you can relate to this post, so I know I'm not alone.

I went to college for a degree that my job has nothing to do with.

I went to Culinary School, for a degree in Baking and Pastry. Fast forward four years later, I'm working at my family's mechanic shop.

Please humor me and tell me one of you lovely people out there has also had this mishap in life. Quite frankly, I love my job...except for the two times a month that I have to pay my student loan bills...On those days I just want to bang my head against a wall....hard...and repeatedly.

whyyyyy did I go for baking, that's a hobby not a job...

whyyyyy didn't I think it through...

whyyyyy didn't I listen to my parents, (who were telling me to go to community college for a year or two while I make sure I know what I wanted to do when I grew up).

Honestly, I LOVE baking, & I was good at it, & it IS a job (a hard one at that too!). I know some of you are thinking "it's not hard to bake"...But the school I went to was a one year program, for a degree that takes two years to get, so it was very intense, it was a full year (no summer for me!), and I loved EVERY second of it. It wasn't perfecting grandmas apple pie...It was making $10,000 wedding cakes, making 5 foot tall sculptures out of chocolate, it was burning ourselves while pulling sugar to get it so thin you could see through it, and making a flower, or a balloon out of it, without breaking it, and it was making plated desserts so pretty we didn't even want to eat them, made of a dozen different components, that were all different flavors, and making them all work together, while it either looked so effortlessly they couldn't believe the flavors that came out of it, or making it so complex, they didn't understand how it was put together, or how we defied gravity while it's plating.

I don't know if you can hear the passion coming out of me while I write this, but my heart is pounding just trying to explain it to you.

After this year was up, I had to do a three month externship at a bakery. I did mine in Portland, OR... Which if anyone has been there, it is a very large city.

And to let you all in on why I no longer bake (professionally)...I have very bad anxiety, and thanks to my mother being over protective, and a worried mother, I also get very paranoid and am a professional at thinking of the worst possible thing that could happen. So as soon as my externship was over, they offered me a job, but I couldn't take the stress of being a 19 year old girl living by myself in a big city, with so much crime daily, & all of my family was hours away, & I had no friends in that city. 

So I came home to my small town that I grew up in, and started working at my familys business, managing the bills, while I went to community college to pursue my second degree, which was going to be accounting.

I wanted to open my own bakery & be able to do the books side of it myself as well as the baking, because I LOVE office work, & paper work. I started taking accounting classes, & halfway through my first semester, the college informed me that once you have a degree you lose you scholarships, and all of your student aide.. I had to immediately halt attending all my classes, until I could figure out how to pay for it. The School board told me I would have to take my case to them and argue why I need to continue receiving financial aide. Long story short, I had to pay for half a semester out of pocket, when I was a broke college student with no savings, had a lot of headaches for a couple of months trying to find the correct people to talk to on the board, could not get all of them together to have a hearing for my case, and to put it simply, I gave up. I was spread to thin, jerked around too much, and threw my towel in.


I have a full time job, that I can get any days off for appointments, or 'me' days, I get to do paper work, book keeping, and payroll. With the economy in the town I'm from (and would like to continue to live and work in), they would not support a high end bakery like I would have liked to have.
But now I have Little 'B', & I enjoy spending my time with him, and baking has to be your number one priority if you're going to do it.

My life changed in ways I never imagined. I had the time of my life at school, I loved EVERY SECOND OF IT. But I also love my life now, managing my familys business, and having enough down time to try to start a blog!

But I still have those two student loan payments every month that remind me of my not so well thought out plan. Oh well, life happens. A lot, (and I mean A LOT) of people do not use their degree in their career that they are currently in... So at least I'm not alone.

Please comment if you can relate at all! Or tell me some of the famous people you know that have useless degrees. I don't know if you know Jenna Marbles, but she's the one I think of when I get down about my not-in-use degree. THIS video gives me great comfort