Hello Susie

I have always had a passion for cooking, but I didn’t know where to start. From my earliest memories every Christmas my aunt would get me to help her to cook all of the yummy treats that we used to have like mince tarts and short bread cookies.

I left high school when I was 16. I didn’t like being there, and I thought that I could be doing better things with my time rather than being stuck in a classroom. So I disengaged myself from my family and from anyone else that I thought was going to try and tell me to go back to school and complete my high school education. I instead spent a lot of my time hanging around with my friends, doing nothing in particular.

All the while, I still had my strong passion for cooking. I successfully applied to TAFE to try to complete a hospitality course. I thought that I was in the right frame of mind to try this, but I was wrong, and I ended up dropping out of the course. A few months later I went back to TAFE and tried again. But again, I couldn’t complete the course and I left.

A few months after I left my TAFE course I was at Frontyard. I was doing an art class called Evolution and I kept saying that I could do a better job at supplying the lunches. This was because in my opinion and the opinion of everyone else who was there, that the muffins weren’t cooked properly and I kept banging on about it! So the worker who had gotten me into the Evolution course, then referred me to a place called STREAT.

A couple of weeks later I had my first interviews and I was put through to the next round. Once the second interview was complete I was then told I had been accepted into the program. I was so excited!

So that’s how I came to be in the STREAT program and I’ve enjoyed every minute that I’ve been here, particularly in the kitchen and on the carts as well. So far it’s been a lot of fun, but it’s also been a lot of hard work, and this time around I’m not going anywhere!