Celebrating 10 Years of the Fellows Program: Amanda Wareham
Amanda Wareham
Fellow from July 2015 to June 2017, based in Saint Paul/Minneapolis
Bon Appétit campus attended: Macalester College
Current job: I work in psychiatric nursing and attend school full-time.
Did the Fellowship shape your career choices? I learned a lot about myself while traveling and working with diverse groups of people. I learned that I was capable of almost any type of public speaking. I learned that above all, I love people and wanted the best for them. I loved the relationships I built with students, chefs, administrators and everyone else I had the pleasure of meeting during my Fellowship. The passion that developed in fostering these relationships led me to realize how vital interpersonal connections were to satisfying my career goals. Ultimately, that realization helped me make the connection to health care and determine that nursing was where I wanted to be.
Memorable experience as a Fellow: One of my absolute favorite parts of the Fellowship was leading a Healthy Kids in the Bon Appétit Kitchen class. I’ve always had a love for education, and this event brought a lot of my favorite things together. I particularly enjoyed watching the focus and fascination with which many of the kids approached the meal preparation; it was dazzling to see them have little epiphanies and solve problems. Seeing the kids explore kitchen skills and cultivate their relationship to food was in a way therapeutic, and allowed me to deepen my own love of cooking: I always learned something from the chefs that I was able to take home and share with roommates and my partner.
Read more Fellows 10th Anniversary interviews: