Day 44: Remember the Time…I Was ”Carried” During An Exam

I went to culinary school, which was a 6 level professional course. Level 3 of the program is by far the most difficult and most intense of all 6. With this reputation the practical part of the exam, you can expect, was no cake walk. The exam began at 5:45 pm sharp until 8:30 pm when the first course was due. Everyone worked on 2 preset dishes, which was later judged by former students and chef-instructors. They basically tore it apart each dish, told you what was wrong with it, and how you could do better. My dishes were a vegetable soup made from scratch and a roasted pork loin.  

Part of our grade was cleanliness and teamwork. I had recently gotten shit for not putting the huge lexan container where the pork sat in over to the dish wash station. As a result I made sure to take care of the prep table, because I wanted to good grade. Now to be clear, a lexan is a big plastic container box where we kept our prep ingredients. In this case, it held a huge amount of pork. There was so much in fact that there was a good 2 to 3 inches of pork juice, blood, and melting ice at the bottom.

Being a good team player, and also looking to suck up to the proctor, I decided to tackle the lexan and lug it to the sink, but not before slipping on a wet spot on the floor and spilling this perfume-y cocktail of pork infused water all over me. I had just “Carrie-d” myself. You know, the scene in Carrie where someone pours a bucket of pig blood all over her? It got a good laugh from my chef and the judges who were watching from the other room as well as my classmates. I had blood all over my chef’s coat, but I had to push through.

By the end of the exam during judging, my examiners constantly cracked jokes, which was okay with me. I cracked a few myself. I had to retire that particular chef’s coat because I couldn’t get the blood stains out. I was called a lot of things that night; serial killer, murderer, pig lover (and not the good kind), sewer diver but none of them good cook. That would have to wait 4 months.