Got the job...

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congrats sweetleaf!!

cooking is an art and a skill...and from what i've heard, working your way up from dishwasher to prep and then learning to cook in a professional kitchen has its perks over attending culinary school.

my ex is a chef and never went to culinary school. he says the fresh culinary school grads who came to work all had the same problems in the kitchen: they knew all the techniques and processes and points of interest in flavor and texture, but had a very hard time adapting to a restaurant setting where the food needs to be made on a routine time schedule and to the chef's specifications or agreement. and a cook has to be doing and thinking about more than one thing at a time. and when asked to create their own amuse bouches and crudo dishes and such, their approaches tended to lack in originality, flow, and had timing problems which translated into technical issues.

i guess there are pros and cons to both but i don't think culinary school is always better, especially up front. handling the structure of a professional kitchen, at least how it has been described to me by him and how i have heard his peers talk about it, is a skill. working up to it is like an acclimation of information and application, which is an equally good way to approach working in a kitchen, and more appropriate for a lot of people than diving straight into culinary school. it's actually respected within the industry, too.

and the good thing about culinary school is it will always be there waiting to take your money if you find yourself in a position where you can and want to go in the future.

also, i know that lately more restaurants are considering where their food comes from, which dovetails nicely into growing plants! local produce is in, even in the incorporated corn state of indiana. so i'm assuming somewhere in colorado has been on that train for awhile longer.

tl;dr, the possibilities are great. and this is only one possibility of many!