Final and Practical

We did the exam first - as I said for Thursday, luckily he had reviewed every question. I was exhausted Friday.

Then we moved on to making one pastry cream tart and 6 buttermilk bisquits. I was upset with my products Friday. I just know I could have done better but I just didn't have the energy to start over.
I got a 75/90 on the tart - my topping was overwhipped and there was too much cornstarch in my filling so it wasn't smooth enough. But my crust was well-baked. Chef could tell I was upset (I am so quick to tears these days since I am so tired all the time), and he asked me if I thought his products turn out perfect all the time. They don't - we've seen him get really pissed off at himself when he screws up his demos - usually he is so jokey with us, but when he screws up his demos (usually due to the heat of the classroom and how it destroys products quickly) he snaps at us a lot.

I got a 90/90 on the bisquits. 20/20 on overall kitchen behavior. I earned a 95% in the class.

But. I found this a little laughable - I got a 45/50 on the paper. I have a graduate school education - and my paper is not considered good enough? I just wanted to know why I didn't do better, since there was nothing marked on the paper, but all he could tell me was that I didn't give enough detail. Apparently, other people had written 4-5 pages. And then he said I used double-spacing (according to the grading criteria, this was required), and I used too large a font (12point Arial, again, required). I pointed out that I followed the directions, and there were no page requirements, and he just looked at me and told me he still loved me and it had not impacted my grade in any way. I also pointed out that the cupcake shop I went to was about 10 feet big, so there really wasn't that much to describe further, but I don't even know why I was kind-of arguing since I didn't really care. I know I hadn't made much of an effort with the paper. I didn't remember to write it until I woke up from my nap at 4:15 Tuesday, the night it was due. I guess I just think it's weird that my writing wouldn't be considered good enough with all my education - I've read other student's papers when they've shown them to me, and they have grammatical and punctuation errors everywhere, and they did better. Maybe because it's a technical school rather than the educational background I come from?
Rico was taking pretty long to finish, and the rest of us were at our table just standing around eithe after being graded or waiting to be graded. Irish took the piece Chef has sliced to see the inside of the tart and taste it, and pushed it into Rico's face. It was really funny. I was too slow to catch the actual cream on the face though. Later, she said she was wondering why we were all watching her pipe, and then she noticed Irish very close to her but she was concentrating so much on piping that she wasn't quick enough to stop the tart from being pushed into her face. She laughed it off, but the rest of the night she said she kept smelling whipped cream because it got up her nose. Oh, the fun we get into late at night...

Final thoughts/Lessons Learned:
Chef C was great. He told us he will either have us for B&P 2, or definitely the restaurant. He said that he doesn't really see more of us dropping - we lost a few this class - but the other class will lose a lot (he aided in there for Meat Fab) and we will end up combined into one class. He said we all seem very dedicated, whereas students in the other class just sometimes don't show up for class. Interesting. Next up is Garde Manger. We've heard good things about the Chef, but then again, we also hear it's a class that is the breaking point for students. Should be interesting for me given how stressed I already am. Boy stresses aren't helping. It's time for me to state what I need, and I have never been good at that, even if a lot of people have the impression that this would be easy for me. It never has been, but it's the worst when it comes to boys. Sometimes I think it's amazing that I'm a psychologist given all my own issues. Those who can't do, teach, right?

Off to bed - I was up until after 4 both nights this weekend, and though I took a 3 hour nap this afternoon/evening, I think I need to try to fall asleep again. Full week of work ahead - goody. Can you sense the excitement?