Violet used to dream of becoming a cook when she was little. She would even make elaborate 'salads' from weeds in her backyard. Some wild onion grass, the yellow petals from a dandelion, and even the seeds off of a plantain leaf plant would be thrown together to add some visual appeal. Then her salad would be plated on a plate she drew up with chalk with sticks she shaped into utensils using stones or the sidewalk to smooth them.
Of course, this was more so when Violet was really young and barely even in elementary school. Eventually, her dreams grew bigger and she learned more about cooking. She started helping her grandmother in the kitchen while she would cook breakfasts and her grandfather when he would grill burgers and steaks on the grill. Violet even had to reshape her dreams to be bigger than she had thought of before as one of her least favorite uncles teased her that being a line cook wasn't going to pay very well nor be very impressive. Thus, she started saying she wanted to be an executive chef instead.
It wasn't until Violet was in middle school that she even discovered that there were other potential career options she might want to pursue. That was about the age when her love for video games also began to take on new meaning. It was no longer just playing superhero fighting games on the PlayCube with dad because she wanted to spend time with him. It started with wanting to play and beat Zinia games by herself and rushing to complete her homework so that her mom would grant her permission to play for a few hours before dinner time.
Of course, video games themselves weren't the trigger for Violet to become interested in graphic design, instead it was just one minor part of her journey. What really put the career option on her radar was a trip to a career technical school during her first year in middle school. During this trip, she was taken around to get a short introduction to all of the different programs they offered and she even got a few trinkets and pamphlets to take home from the experience.
There was a welding group, which handed out little Halloween-themed metal souvenirs, the culinary group, which showed off the work it took to make the lunch they ended up making that day, and then there was the graphic design class. There Violet got to watch as they made drawings of anime characters with a digital art program and a mockup advertisement that could easily be put into a magazine. The instructor never mentioned how the same skills could be applied as part of the video game-making process, instead Violet didn't really learn much about that until her college years.
Still, Violet had become fascinated with the concept of making art on a digital canvas. Her grandfather had always encouraged her to try her hand at drawing, but she always found it messy and frustrating whenever a line came out wrong. With digital art, though, one could easily erase their mistake and then draw a new line, ensuring that the final result was that much better.
So, when it came time for the second tour of the career technical school, during her first year of high school, she easily made her choices for which two programs she wanted to tour. This time she could choose what she wanted to learn more about, so she chose culinary arts for the first option and graphic design for the second. Despite her fascination for the subject, she was, unfortunately, still conflicted about which choice to make at that point in time.
This was what Violet found herself dreaming about today. She walked behind several others who had also chosen to learn more about the culinary arts aspect of things. Apparently, they would be switching to their second choice after they ate lunch. Unlike the previous time she had been here, they were going to be looking at both the 11th-grade and 12th-grade classrooms for the culinary arts material.
If you spot this narrative on Amazon, know that it has been stolen. Report the violation.
If she decided to attend the school, she would have to buy the uniform and pay for the class fees associated with whichever class she wanted to attend. Then she would have a small handful of classes to continue the normal educational side of things with the special classes occurring during the mid-day portion. The culinary arts 11th-grade course work would apparently see her studying book work before going to the cafeteria to prepare lunches, which everyone else who attended the school would be eating that day. The menu would be decided by the teacher and they would have to strictly follow recipes. Each week they would switch tasks so that they could learn everything there was about running a kitchen from cooking to serving to dish washing and food safety.
The 12th-grade work for culinary arts was similar, but then they would be in charge of running a restaurant that would be open to the public. Others who attended the school could go there during their lunch period and order from a menu then would be waited on by the students, much like one would at a normal restaurant. However, parents and random people off the street could also enter the restaurant, which made it a very serious and stressful-sounding affair. There would be more freedom to choose which dishes you wanted to cook within the station you were assigned to for the week, but it was still fairly similar to the 11th-grade cafeteria's setup. One week you would be serving, taking orders, delivering drinks and food, and carrying away the dirty plates. The next you might be on the bread station, salad station, dessert station, or even working on dishes. You didn't really get a choice on which you worked at, but you still had to deliver quality work.
To make matters worse, apparently there were certifications you had to earn and a minimum number of job hours you had to log before the end of the year with a restaurant-type job. You would be responsible for obtaining your own employment, ensuring you get the paperwork signed off on by your employer, and everything else related to it. While Violet had ended up getting a job at a restaurant during her time at the career technical school anyway, this had not been the ideal situation for her at the time she was doing the tour. Instead, it all just added up to a sense of overwhelm and made it easier to choose just about anything else.
The lunch this time around had been rather mediocre, even compared to the usual slop the lunch ladies served at her normal school. Violet wasn't sure she remembered the food being quite so bad when she was younger. Maybe this year's students were just worse at cooking or perhaps it was just that she was less picky about her food when she was younger. It wasn't exactly as if her own parents were talented in that department, after all.
The graphic design class was very much the same as it had been the last time she had toured the place, but this time she had more time to ask the instructor questions about everything. Apparently, the dress code was much more relaxed for this class. A somewhat ugly T-shirt with the program's information on it, jeans, and a flannel zip-up with the class's logo branded on it. Well, it still sounded better than the rather complex multi-layered outfit the culinary class required.
The instructor was also good about reassuring her that they would teach them everything from scratch so that they didn't have to have any prior knowledge or skill about the subject. Violet had taken a computer class where they designed websites in her 9th-grade year of high school as an elective and had been playing around on her own at home for the last few years, so she wasn't exactly clueless, but it was still good to know she wasn't expected to be super talented or risk majorly messing everything up right off the bat like with the culinary class.
When Violet later looked at the fees associated with the two classes, the graphic design one had actually been slightly cheaper as well. Having a less complicated uniform that didn't have to be special ordered certainly helped a good bit with that. For the most part she just needed to cover the costs associated with some special computer programs they'd need both in class and at home for any homework. So, just like that things were set in motion for Violet who would later end up working as a graphic designer for some indie video game studios just before she died and was reincarnated into another world.