34-year-old quit her 6-figure tech job to go to pastry school in France: ‘What would I want to be doing that would bring me joy?'Valerie Valcourt is living what some might consider the dream life: The 34-year-old former executive assistant quit her tech job over a year ago and now makes pastries in the South of France.
"I ended up kind of falling on my face," Valcourt tells CNBC Make It."I didn't have enough saved, and I didn't realize the mental toll it would take to quit my job at the time." So, she put culinary school on the backburner and rejoined the corporate world to sort things out.Valcourt realized she would need to double her savings to roughly $20,000 to live off of while in school.
Valcourt says the best things about her pastry job are learning new skills and working with her hands. Looking back, she's grateful her first try at culinary school didn't pan out. She needed more time to build her mental confidence,"because being in a kitchen is no joke." Valcourt says she doesn't have a five-year plan but generally wants to learn as many cooking and pastry techniques as possible, and see as much of France while she can. Her next goal: saving up for a car to drive around the countryside.