As a young girl, I grew up in a divided household. My parents and my grandfather were avid fans of Florida State and my aunt and I were huge fans of Florida.     

    We would spend Saturday afternoons watching games and making sly comments about the other team's mistakes.    

  Even as a little girl, I my dream was to attend the University of Florida. I wasn't sure what I wanted to do at the time, but that is where I wanted to be. 

   This was an important goal because my mother was never able to finish high school because she had me. She always told me that I would go on to accomplish things that she never could. That was my goal.

    Luckily for me, school came very natural to me. I never really had to work hard to get a good grade, and studying was rarely a thing I needed to do. I loved school and it became my passion. I also found a love of reading while in school and I always tried to help the teachers with any extra tasks.

"school work" by Kalexanderson is licensed under CC BY-NC-SA 2.0

In high school, my passion for school changed into a passion for the FFA. I found an advisor that served as a mentor to me and helped mold my creative teaching talents into a refinded skill. I created many study guides, tests and study material for so many Career Development Events. I also competed in many CDEs and even made it to Nationals.

Not long after, I finally reached my first goal; graduating high school. That was a huge moment for my life as I was able to accomplish something my mother wasn't able to. I even took dual-enrollment classes during high school with my local community college. Both of these were huge steps.

After high school, I felt that Culinary was my calling. I went to my local technical school and got my hands dirty with food. I loved the way you could bring a dish together with all sorts of ingredients and create something beautiful. I even got to excercise my competitive skills once again and placed 3rd in the State of Florida's Skills USA competition.