CAREER REINVENTION

As a teenager, Lubni “Lu” Cazeau swore she would never waste time sweating away in a kitchen. “I’d see my stepmom come home from a hard day of work and have to turn around and make dinner,” Cazeau says. “I thought, ‘I would never do that.’ I wanted to be a new age woman. “Then I went to college,” she recalls. “And started to starve.”

Cazeau bought a couple of cookbooks and some pots and pans. Experimental dishes here and there turned into frequent culinary masterpieces for grateful friends.

A hobby – and a future chef – was born.

College is a career builder, to be sure, but it’s also the place where many of us first hear our inner voice, the one that tells us our likes and dislikes, our strengths and our shortfalls – surprising as they may be.

And this time of year, it’s tempting to reconnect with that voice to reinvent ourselves and our outlook.

“When you take learning seriously, whatever the subject matter is, if you’re taking it to heart as many adult learners do, it becomes a part of who you are,” says John Dirkx, professor of higher, adult and lifelong education at Michigan State University.

“It becomes a medium through which you understand yourself and your place in the world more deeply.”

During her first stint at college, Cazeau earned a marketing degree and went to work as an advertising sales coordinator in Fort Lauderdale, Fla.

But she couldn’t quite shake the feeling that her future was elsewhere. So with her 30th birthday fast approaching, Cazeau went back to college.

This time, college was Le Cordon Bleu College of Culinary Arts in Miami to earn an associate of science in culinary arts.

And this time was different.

“Without a car, I put myself through culinary school,” she says. “I worked from 8 to 5:30 and went to school from 6 to midnight, five days a week. … I took the bus, I begged my classmates to take me home.”

And that’s how she knew she had made the right decision.

“I knew this was something I was doing for me. It wasn’t a degree I was getting for my parents or because it was the right thing to do,” she says.

“I remember how it would be so painstaking to get up in the morning to do the same mundane task over and over, versus when you love what you do, it doesn’t feel like a job.”

Of course, a return to school doesn’t have to mean a change in careers; it can offer a new worldview, a new skill set or simply a new group of peers. It can take place in a bricks-and-mortar campus setting or a much less traditional venue.

The National Zoo in Washington, D.C., for example, collaboratively with George Mason University, offers undergraduate, graduate and certificate programs in such areas as effective conservation leadership and species monitoring.

Much of the learning takes place at the zoo’s Conservation & Research Center (CRC) campus in Front Royal, Va., where students may encounter a black-footed ferret, the most endangered mammal in the U.S., among countless other species.

“It’s not just a classroom experience, it’s a hands-on experience,” says Kate Christen, graduate/professional training specialist at the zoo.

“And because practitioners come to our courses from all over the place, you leave with a connection to the CRC, but also to people you meet from all over the world.”

From esteemed four-year universities to local community colleges, from Asian classics to patisserie and baking, a return to school can take on many forms. The key is to embark on the endeavor with an open mind.

“Most people enter a program with really explicit goals,” says Dirkx, “and one or two years into it they learn so much more about not only the possibilities out there, but about themselves and what excites them and doesn’t excite them.

“It becomes a search for identity,” he says. “Some of it’s explicit, but a lot of it is implicit. It gradually bubbles to the surface over time and becomes a fundamental shift in one’s consciousness.”

For Cazeau, who graduated from Le Cordon Bleu in April 2008 and now works as a line cook at Gansevoort South resort in Miami Beach, Fla., that meant shifting her view on both cooking and marketing, and discovering what makes her tick in the process.

“In marketing you take a concept and put it out there in a way that will make the customer happy,” she says. “It’s the same thing with cooking.

“You put your own twist and flavor on something and present it so it’s beautiful and eye-catching. In the end, it’s the sensation of making someone happy that I like.”

As for the decision to return to school, she adds: “You have to look at it that you’re not necessarily flipping your life upside down. You’re just taking everything you’ve already learned and adding that to something new.

“You’re re-creating your life, and you’re re-creating it to make yourself happy.”