Cooper Evans

Smiling, junior Charles Lin cuts a green onion April 4 in his house. Lin cuts many green onions and oranges daily for his culinary classes. Photo by Cooper Evans

Junior Charles Lin is no stranger to the inner workings of a kitchen.

In second grade, every day he would walk home, alone, from the bus stop.

And on those days he had the same routine.

Slip off his shoes in the garage.

Set down his black backpack.

Check the fridge.

His older brothers Aaron and Elvin were in middle school at the time, and didn’t get out until 3:45 p.m. His mom was busy waitressing at the Mongolian Grill. His dad was prepping sushi at Jun’s Japanese Restaurant in Prairie Village, by Shawnee Mission East High School. Both parents worked long shifts and weren’t home till around 9:30 or 10:00 p.m.

So the house was always empty when Lin got there.

He’d rifle through the fridge’s contents; boy choi, green onions, garlic, mushrooms and day old rice sitting in styrofoam takeout containers that his dad brings home from work.

Then the large white chest freezer: pork, shrimp, chicken.

He takes out whatever he’s in the mood for and waits for it to defrost before his brothers get home.

And once they do it’s always the same question. What are we making tonight, Charles?

Six years later he’s sitting in the computer lab at Trailridge Middle School. Business education teacher Jody Fangman had assigned a scavenger hunt on the CAA website so that her students could explore different classes and local opportunities before going into highschool. That’s when Lin sees the Culinary Arts and Hospitality Program — something clicked. 

In the fall of sophomore year, he competed in his first competition through the culinary program, at JCCC.

“I remember noticing that I’d gone overtime,” Lin said. “I literally put my hands on the counter and just stood there, silent. I needed to stop cooking. I wasn’t even surprised with the way things had gone in practice. I was very disorganized and frustrated.”

Even after driving home, scrolling, reading and laying in bed he couldn’t shake the feeling of disappointment that was gnawing at his stomach like an advanced tapeworm, or a McDonalds Filet-O-Fish. 

“I just wanted to quit,” Lin said. 

But he ignored the feeling and kept cooking and showing up to the CAA on time in his chef’s uniform. He spent hours after school perfecting pastries, wiping down stainless steel countertops and plucking the individual leaves from cilantro stems on prep nights. He helped make menus for the Broadmoor Bistro. 

Most evenings after Lin got home, he was a cocktail of exhaustion, stress and nervous energy. Something was keeping him going, but he wasn’t sure what. 

Obligation? 

Passion?

His parents wanted him to do anything else, especially since they had clocked so many draining hours in kitchens and restaurants for little pay after immigrating from Fuzhou, China. 

“They didn’t want me following in their footsteps,” Lin said. “It became a sort of controversial topic with my relatives as well, and it’s something I sort of hide now.” 

Last November, Lin hesitantly signed up for the JCCC cooking competition once again, and after another two months of preparation, he won second place. There’s a medal, and scholarship prize. He was completely ecstatic, but that didn’t last.

“Later that night, I just sat at my dinner table thinking,” Lin said. “Was all the suffering, time and energy I put into this competition worth it? Was I meant for this program? I knew being a chef would require so many light nights, a lot of labor and standing and working long hours. Did I really want to be a chef?”

He had deep conversations with friends over winter break debating what he was going to do. 

“We kind of unpacked what it meant to him emotionally,” junior and close friend Amber Quint said. “It was this realization of ‘Should I do culinary for fun or because I have to?’ That’s whenever he decided to change over.”

Staying in culinary might mean being absolutely miserable. On the other hand, quitting would mean going back to square one. 

Staring at the course card for senior year, Lin was making one of the hardest decisions of his life. 

He was going to quit.

What next?

“It was a feeling of being left behind in life,” Lin said. “I had a real issue with comparing myself to others. I was gonna enter my last year of high school starting over, and that terrified me.”

Lin still hasn’t told his parents — he doesn’t want to prove them right — or most friends and classmates yet. For a while, everyone had associated him with culinary. He was the kid who loved baking cookies and bringing brownies to calc study dates. He ate paella in the back of math teacher Elissa Ojeda’s honors Algebra 2 class while she complained about how it smelled. He loved making steamed cabbage rolls and fried rice for when his friends came over. He gave homemade chocolate chip banana bread to the person interviewing him for this story. 

Food will always be a way of how Lin expresses love and gratitude. It’s a life skill rooted in core childhood memories. 

He just won’t be pursuing it after graduation like he’d always hoped.

“In 8th grade, I really thought this was what I’d do with the rest of my life,” Lin said.

Now things are different. 

“He’s a happy dude,” Quint said. “I think he’s a lot less stressed. I don’t know. A lot has happened in the last four months, right? He’s figuring out what he wants to do. And what will make him happy. I just want to see him happy.”

He is.