I am not a chef. Not even a cook. I fall into the category of people who scrounge together meals, occasionally and eagerly resorting to Lower Live. I treat cooking as a necessary but unfortunate chore. No one is to blame but myself. I have three much younger siblings who still need their food prepared, so when I am home, there’s usually a steady supply of delicious food. At school, I have relied heavily on Trader Joe’s frozen meals, chicken, and cereal—the diet of champions.
I would like to find enjoyment in cooking and recognize how important it is for my health, but one thing always stops me from experimenting in the kitchen: embarrassment. I have wonderful roommates who would laugh only an appropriate amount if I tried something new or set off the fire alarm using the Mod oven. Still, cooking feels like an important, practical skill I should have tackled earlier—like learning to ride a bike or how to write—which becomes more personal with time.
So, when I joined two of my roommates for a Wednesday night session of BC’s Cooking Club last semester, I did so with a sense of trepidation. We climbed a narrow set of stairs and rounded a corner to find ourselves face-to-face with a towering rack of pots, pans, and knives jutting out in every direction. The clatter of activity and cheerful voices directed our attention to the left side of the room. I said hello to a friend, and she informed us that we would be making breakfast for dinner. One group would take on French omelets and another would be on pancake duty.
We walked through a doorway and settled at a large square table, surrounded by several skillets and more eggs than I’d ever seen in one kitchen. I turned on my burner and started following the demonstration by a Cooking Club member, feeling somewhat confident I could at least make a decent omelet.
But less than a minute had passed before my hopes were dashed. I realized the heat had been a little too high, and instead of a smooth, delicate layer of eggs like the instructor’s, mine were already halfway to scrambled. The instructor looked over and said, “Yeah, you don’t have to eat those.”
Humiliated, I ate my plate of scrambled eggs in record time, trying to avoid looking too longingly at the perfect omelets taking shape around me.
I walked into the next room, hoping to redeem myself, and will spare you the details of what happened next. All you need to know is that I slapped an enormous lump of pancake batter onto the industrial stove at low heat, then flipped it way too soon. I ended up with a jumbled dumpster fire of chocolate chips, butter, and batter—the complete opposite of a redemption arc.
When I was spotted trying to pass off my barely-recognizable pancakes as edible, I became a lightning rod of tension and discomfort. I threw away what was left of the mess I couldn’t stomach, cracked a joke about dysfunctional kitchenware, became a diligent cleaner, and quickly made my excuses to leave.
My roommates, on the other hand, had a great time and were laughing about their full stomachs. I told them how embarrassed I was, explaining that I can make both pancakes and eggs. I didn’t know how to prove that I was not totally useless (which was how I felt), and explain why I was so uncomfortable. But I tried, and one of them said, “You find the weirdest things embarrassing, and then sometimes do stuff I would never do.”
I have no problem stopping someone and asking for a picture with them or telling a guy he’s attractive, only to find out he’s younger than me and he has a girlfriend. I love starting a risky round of hot seat, public speaking, or singing in front of a large group of people. There are countless situations where I am willingly vulnerable in front of other people, like writing this column. When it came to cooking, though, I felt a different kind of embarrassment —I didn’t think it was supposed to be vulnerable. To me, it is a universal life skill that any legal adult should have mastered. And because I lacked that skill, I felt inexperienced and inadequate.
But since this incident, I’ve learned the following lessons about embarrassment, which may apply to you somehow:
- We all have different strengths and weaknesses.
- Some people never learn to cook well, while others do so out of necessity and may never actually enjoy it.
- I am young. It is not too late to learn.
- I constantly try to be better, but sometimes we get stuck in ways we don’t even notice.
- It is time to get in the kitchen and just try.
- Embarrassment is temporary, but its rewards are often not.
- You should never impose embarrassment on yourself or let other people make you feel unnecessarily embarrassed. In this case, I was the only one imposing judgment on myself. You have control over what you let affect you and how you internalize and react to situations.
- We all experience embarrassment in different ways. My roommate told me she admired the bold way I approach some situations that she would find difficult, and to her, cooking is something simple that anyone can learn.
- The grass is always greener on the other side. For me, knowing my way around a kitchen would feel like the perfectly manicured green lawns of the Quad, but for other people, the things I’m not afraid to try might look just as appealing.
- Yes, it’s an occupational hazard of being alive, but a lot of the things that make life worth living—eating great food, exercising, making friends, finding love, creating art—require a little embarrassment.
If we embarrass ourselves a little more often, we might find the answers. At the very least, we’ll have some good stories to tell.
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