Julia's Choice to go to College
One of the major decisions that Julia made in her life was going to college. She enrolled at Le Cordon Bleu, a popular Parisian school specifically for cooking, in 1949. Julia failed a “housewife” class that was for expert cooks. Since she failed, she had to take a yearlong program with professional restaurateurs. Her instructor and professor in that class was Chef Max Bugnard. In 1950, Julia officially graduated from Le Cordon Bleu college after she failed her first exam. Julia was introduced to two french women by the names of, Simone Beck and Louisette Bertholle in the year of 1952. The three women opened a cooking show not too long after they met each other. Before Julia met these two ladies they were working on getting a french cookbook published respectively for French cooking for Americans and they were seeking an American collaborator. All three of these women started working on the book together. Avis DeVoto, one of Julia’s friends, was the co-author of one of Julia’s books. They submitted their manuscript, which was 850 pages long, and the company found it to be too long and confusing. Julia and her friend did a enormous revision on the book, decreasing the number of pages in the book down to 684, Houghton Mifflin rejected the book for a second time. The manuscript ended up in the hands of Judith Jones, who was a young editor at Alfred A. Knopf. Judith actually took this book into serious consideration and the book was accepted. That marked the beginning of a long, productive journey. None of this would have happened if it wasn’t for her choice to attend college.