Where We Belong (3 page)

At seventeen, after she completed her high school requirements, Michelle began dating a man named Josh, whom she met at a party. He was twenty years old and they indulged in drugs together. Looking back now, Michelle understands why his “I love you” drew her to him.

“I thought he was a rare catch. Here was someone who cared about me. I didn’t realize it was very normal, that it’s what people
should
have in their life.”

Both quickly decided to stop using drugs and alcohol; they’d had enough. The pair was engaged in 1998 and Michelle agreed to join Josh at the Assembly of God church services he attended. By then, Michelle’s father had developed a small real estate business and offered them an apartment at fair market rates, which they accepted.

The next decision was one seventeen-year-old Michelle loathed making, but she couldn’t ignore the need for health benefits and a steady income. The cafeteria job she had at the local community college had ended, so she started work at a door factory located in town. Still, she didn’t lose sight of her dream to one day enroll in medical school and become a doctor.

“College was always in the plan, but, depending on the day,” she says with a soft laugh, “it seemed less or more feasible.”

Michelle was proficient at math, so factory managers assigned her the task of applying accurate measurements on each door to indicate where the hinges should be attached. She and another worker measured and marked, and the door moved on. Because measurements were required on both sides, a machine was used to flip over the door. Just a few months into the job, the machine broke on a day when Michelle and a female coworker were measuring an extremely heavy hospital door with a lead core.

“A supervisor yelled at me and another woman, demanding that we flip the door over by hand or he’d find other workers who would. I needed the job and I’d just gotten hired, and they told me that if I was ever late or did anything wrong I’d be fired, no questions asked. So, I tried my best to flip the door over.”

Something popped in Michelle’s back. So excruciating was the pain that she couldn’t move her arms. Michelle was transported to the emergency room for an X ray. She’d not broken any bones but suffered soft tissue damage. A general physician prescribed pain medication and recommended work restrictions regarding limited standing and lifting. Michelle immediately returned to work on an overnight shift but was unable to perform her duties. Within two weeks, weary of being called “worthless” and cursed at by a factory manager, Michelle quit.

Josh and Michelle were married that June in his parents’ backyard. His grandmother made Michelle’s dress and her father catered the low-key party afterward; their religion disallowed dancing and drinking.

In August 1999, following months of therapy on her back, neck, and arms, Michelle decided to honor her aspirations and go to college. She chose a Christ-centered Pentecostal school because of her immersion in Josh’s strict religion. Bolstered by academic scholarships and financial aid, Michelle enrolled in North Central University in Minneapolis, two hours north of Mason City. She decided to major in psychology (a way to treat people without requiring a medical degree) and biblical studies. The couple lived in a one-bedroom apartment in downtown Minneapolis and both found work delivering pizzas. Always interested in cooking with her father and baking with her mother, Michelle also took a job in a gourmet deli located inside a high-end grocery store in the city. She was exposed for the first time to imported food and flavors from around the world. Michelle took a third job working as a chef’s assistant and inventory clerk at a local cooking store.

At eighteen, she had begun her journey toward higher education and even higher expectations for her future. Her mother was on board with Michelle’s decision, though distracted by a crumbling second marriage and subsequent divorce she was dealing with in Florida. Michelle’s father and stepmother, Rose, were silently skeptical about both the rigid religion and the Bible college.

“I’d gotten married very young to someone I hadn’t known for very long. I had gone from being a very good kid most of my childhood to having a few rocky years in high school, even though I still got good grades. Then I got involved in a new religion that was way out there. But they knew that if they said that they didn’t want me to do something, I would do it.”

By May 2000, two semesters later, even Michelle thought the religion-centered college was a bad idea. Put off by what she perceived as the school’s exclusionary views and severe doctrines, she left North Central.

“I thought,
Well, maybe everyone was right. I’m just not cut out for college
.”

She also left the Assembly of God church, opting instead to worship at a Baptist church.

Determined to continue educating herself, Michelle enrolled fifteen minutes away at Le Cordon Bleu College of Culinary Arts. She would complete an accelerated fourteen-month program that offered training in classical cooking methods, the art of French pastry, and professional baking. Michelle already felt comfortable in the kitchen and deduced that learning a sophisticated trade was at least a step up from remaining an unskilled worker. But, once again, Mike was not keen on Michelle’s plan.

“This was the worst for him. He’d been a cook and he knew that he’d slaved away eighty hours a week and he barely got by. He was hoping that I would do better for myself.”

With few opportunities for scholarships to Le Cordon Bleu, Michelle knew she’d have to work forty hours a week and also procure loans to cover the $25,000 tuition.

“The thing that has always kept my credit good is that one time my dad told me, ‘If I don’t give you any other advice, pay your bills on time.’ ” She laughs. “Even though I was raised with zero financial planning information, there were a few things like that which really stuck with me, and that’s been super helpful.”

Classes started in September 2000, and within weeks Michelle knew she’d made the right decision.

“I really enjoyed it. I was excited to go every day, and there wasn’t a whole lot that had happened before this program that I was excited about.”

Michelle had gone through a rebellion-based vegetarian phase in high school and remained a non-meat-eater thereafter for ethical and health reasons. She did, however, sample every kind of food in cooking school. She excelled at the academics and the hands-on work. With a laugh she describes a day when the butchery teacher instructed the class to break down large pieces of meat into restaurant-sized servings.

“He was completely irate because people weren’t doing a very good job. He yelled, ‘The goddamn vegetarian chef is doing the best work!’ ”

Halfway through the Le Cordon Bleu program, despite her success and enjoyment, twenty-year-old Michelle felt a distracting urge to look beyond the kitchen. Her real dream was tapping on the shoulder of her chef’s coat.

“I started to realize that if I was at the end of my life and looked back, I would really regret not trying to go to medical school. So, at that point I thought,
It doesn’t really matter to me if I fail, but I would regret not trying
.”

Josh backed Michelle’s idea to pursue medical school and a two-pronged plan was formed. Because the Le Cordon Bleu program required students to land a four-week internship anywhere in the world, Michelle searched for a restaurant that was also close to an affordable college with a premed program. She found the perfect pairing in California: Chez Panisse in Berkeley and, 280 miles north, Humboldt State University in Arcata. She would start classes at Humboldt once she finished her four-week cooking internship. Le Cordon Bleu would allow her to receive her
diplôme
through the mail and not have to fly home to Minnesota to graduate from the program.

Together now for nearly four years, Michelle and Josh were both excited about an adventure out west. In late August 2001, they drove their belongings from Minneapolis to Arcata and moved into a double-wide trailer with Josh’s brother and his brother’s friend, who were also enrolled in Humboldt. They then drove south to Berkeley so Michelle could do her internship at Chez Panisse (ranked that year by
Gourmet
magazine as the “Best Restaurant in the United States”) from October to November 2001. Though Josh had promised to get a job in Berkeley, Michelle says he instead met up with friends each day to skateboard. She focused on training at the award-winning restaurant.

Michelle was instantly captivated by the fresh approach to food and cooking at Chez Panisse. Chefs created daily menus that featured local, sustainably sourced, organic, seasonal ingredients.

“It was, hands down, the most delicious food I’d eaten in my whole life. I’d never had vegetables and fruit that tasted so good. That really inspired me to learn the techniques that allow you to create flavorful, healthful food.”

Michelle wanted to learn, literally, from the ground up. She asked her supervisors for permission to leave the kitchen for a few days so she could spend time at the main farm that supplied the restaurant and nearby farmers’ markets.

“It was so different from what I had seen in Iowa, with the monoculture and cornfields and hog farms. Here was a hippie farmer with a long beard and his field had a lot of weeds in it, which was not acceptable in my dad’s garden or in the fields in Iowa. We’d walk through the garden and this farmer would say, ‘Here are the carrots,’ and I’d think,
I don’t see the carrots
. But he dug under a bunch of weeds and said, ‘The sun is so hot it would scorch everything, so this is how I keep from having to water so much.’ ” Michelle was fascinated. “I found all of it very eye opening. It made me realize that you shouldn’t assume things have to be done one certain way. There might be somebody out there doing it in a completely different way. It opened my mind up about a lot of things, not just food.”

By November 2001, twenty-year-old Michelle had completed the internship and secured her
diplôme
from Le Cordon Bleu. Months later, in January 2002, Michelle would begin tackling the premed program at Humboldt State in Arcata. Once more, a combination of academic scholarships, financial aid, and working forty hours a week would make Michelle’s college experience possible. Mike—again—was nervous for his daughter and what he saw as unnecessary crushing debt.

Prepping at Chez Panisse, Berkeley, 2001
(Courtesy of Michelle Hauser)

“My family, especially my dad, grew up with the philosophy that you don’t take out loans for things that you can’t pay back. He didn’t think it made sense financially at all.”

Michelle says she never perceived the financial challenge as a mountain; her daily life had always been riddled with perpetual molehills that she addressed one day at a time.

“I think I lived in survival mode most of the time, always thinking,
How am I going to pay the bills this month?
That almost shielded me somewhat from thinking it would all be too overwhelming, because I was always focused on what needed to be done right now.”

She was also a confident workhorse with newly acquired horsepower. While Josh once again delivered pizzas, Michelle’s
diplôme
allowed her to land higher-paying jobs in the food industry. She found work as a consultant and pastry chef at an all-organic vegetarian restaurant. She was also hired as cooking school manager at a retail cookware store called Pacific Flavors. As an added service to its customers, the store brought in local chefs to teach home cooks various preparation techniques and menu planning. Part of Michelle’s job was to develop course content, but the owner made sure to declare one category off-limits.

“She told me, ‘The one thing you cannot do is have healthy-cooking classes because no one likes them and no one will sign up for them.’ ”

Michelle’s most important job of all was getting familiar with the premed program at Humboldt. Her major was cellular/molecular biology and she was assigned a premed adviser. Michelle was thankful for any guidance on what she needed to do to graduate and to get accepted at a medical school. Jacob Varkey, a biology professor and PhD, outlined for Michelle a road map to success.

“He told me I needed to get all As,” she says, “especially coming from a small high school in the middle of nowhere.”

Jacob also identified the score Michelle needed to make on the Medical College Admission Test (MCAT) and advised her to create a structured study plan to achieve it. He told her that laboratory research should be a component of her résumé, along with extracurricular activities. He suggested volunteer work at an area hospital to help Michelle get a general feel for a career in medicine. Jacob also recommended listing her extensive past and current employment hours on the résumé to illustrate to admissions committees her work ethic, her financial challenges, and the reason why she was attending a lesser-known university.

“Michelle impressed me most with her persistence. She made a point to come and see me every semester and even sometimes once or twice during the semester,” Jacob explains, “which is very rare for students to do because they get busy with their coursework and other activities. But Michelle was very consistent. During the appointment she would tell me what she was doing, and then she’d want to know what else she should be doing, what’s the next step.”