Aspiring Chef Picks Up Second Job as Law Student to Pay for Culinary Training

By Dwight Fuld

QUEENS -- As a recent Yale graduate and the son of Chinese immigrants, Michael Liu has had to make a number of important decisions in his young life. Liu is now faced with his most perplexing decision yet: how to tell his parents he does not want to work in their restaurant. Liu says he was very tempted to forgo his admission to Yale undergrad to stay around his home in Queens, New York to help in his parents’ Chinese restaurant, but ultimately decided to go to school, promising his parents that when he returned, he would go back to the kitchen.

Now, hoping to move out of his parents’ basement, he has decided to attend law school at New York University, but he’s not quite sure how to break the news to his parents. “My parents feel like I owe it to them to stay in the kitchen and care for them when they get older just because they raised me for 17 years. It doesn’t seem all that fair to me,” Liu said in an email to the Solicitor. “For now, I’m going to tell them I’m going to law school to earn more money for my training as a cook. I doubt they’ll buy it, but it’s better than when I told them I was going to a 4 years summer camp when I got into Yale.” When asked if he will miss his Flushing, Queens neighborhood, Liu replied, “ARE YOU SERIOUS? My parents asked me the same thing when I went to Yale. I’m going to NYU. It’s like 50 minutes away on the train, AND there’s like 3 Chinatowns in this city.”