Week 5: Finals.

Well, I made it through my first set of final exams. Finished my first class of culinary school, CUL 111, and have now- since this update is a bit late- commenced into the second half of my first term and second class, CUL 121.

Going into finals week I was feeling a little stressed. Despite the fact that I've done pretty well on the quizzes, haven't missed a day and had my notebook complete and put together, with my current schedule, I was facing four big tests and absolutely no time to study. Kind of a dilemma, eh? Anyway, onto the tests. Wednesday was the Practical Exam, Thursday brought 4 Identification Tests, a 30-minute Knife Skills Test and a Written Final Exam.

The Practical Exam....well, it wasn't perfect. I may have overcooked the potatoes a bit, which according to my chef, gave my soup the consistency of Elmer's. Glue. Yeah. The rest of the group did pretty well, and we managed to scrape out an 85%. I felt kind of stupid,  but everyone was super nice and encouraging and our grade turned out, so I got over it...eventually. :)

My work was super flexible and I got to come in a few hours late on Thursday so I could study up for my finals. I was super glad because though I remembered a lot of the stuff I went through, it really paid off when it came to the written test.

We started Thursday out with the Knife Skills Test. We'd done two previous "mock" tests to get a feel for where we're at, and I'd done decently on both of those, so I wasn't too nervous. It's one of those things that you just have to practice and then be able to perform under the pressure. For the test, you must make different amounts (1 cup, 1/2 cup, etc.) of 7 cuts (Batonnet, Julienne, Brunoise, etc.) out of 4 potatoes in the 30 minute time limit. I got done a little early, made all my cuts and even had time to pick through and eliminate some of the not-so-pretty ones. The chef graded the cuts while we took our ID tests and then announced that I was the winner, 95%, best in the class! It was a much needed victory after my glue soup.

The ID tests went decently as well. I had done pretty well on both the equipment, herbs and vegetable quizzes previously, so I felt good about those, but I was quite nervous about the miscellaneous quiz that the chef had prepared with items from around the kitchen. There were at least 12 that looked and tasted almost exactly the same and there were definitely a few tricky items thrown in. I ended up missing quite a few on that quiz, which brought my grade down a bit, but with an 85% overall, I was feeling pretty good about heading in to take my very last final.

The Final Written exam was a lot of things that I had studied, thankfully, and I was thwarted only a few times by second-guessing myself. Typical. The one thing that was evident from that test was that I needed to work on memorizing my measurement conversions. No surprise there. I ended up with a 94% and felt pretty great about that. Going home Thursday was super satisfying and could have only been made better by the day being Friday instead.

I found out yesterday that I got an A- overall for CUL 111. For being an inexperienced, out of school for the last 3 years, rookie culinary student, I am feeling pretty good about that.

This week we're tackling our first meat- chicken. I'll let you know how that goes, especially after I get done butchering a couple tonight. Ciao!