Trudging Home After The Stage 2 MW Exam

 

Well, the exam is over.  I have been flooded with messages.  Did you pass?  While I don’t know the exact result yet, I can say confidently I did not pass.  On the first day my viticulture theory papers really sucked.  I mean, one of them was really weak. We can try to do a deep dive, roll up our sleeves, break down the data, try to piece it together on why I believe that I didn’t pass that paper.  The conclusion that I made, after careful consideration, is that I just DON’T KNOW ENOUGH about viticulture (yet).  I can’t comment on the actual test questions right now as I must wait on the IMW to publish the test, but let me put it to you this way.  With viticulture I know more than almost any layperson you’ll ever meet.  I DO NOT however know as much as someone that wishes to have a title of “Master” associated with their name.  I knew rolling into that paper I needed to catch a break on the questions.  I spent the last four months working very diligently on both winemaking and viticulture, but I couldn’t cram into my head all the information on all the topics that fell into the sphere of the exam.  Honestly, one of the questions I answered on the exam, I had NO knowledge of just a day earlier.  I had seen a word in a study book that made me say “what is that?” on Monday that allowed me to gain a third grader’s understanding of the topic by test day on Tuesday.  It’s very difficult to write 1200 words on a topic you didn’t know anything about 36 hours earlier however.  This is coming from my fresh direct experience and it’s a little painful.  

What everyone always wants to know about is the tasting papers.  Those are the “fun” ones.  I can’t tell you how different it is tasting wines on your dining room table with an egg timer dictating your pace versus sitting in that test room doing it.  There is so much nervous energy, especially at the start of Day 1, that you can feel it like an electric current.  I had to get up while we waited to start the exam and walk outside the room because the energy was so frazzled and desperate.   You are dealing with a lot of different personalities in this program, and not everyone is able to chill the fuck out and keep perspective.  I had to keep talking myself down in my own head as the vibe of the room permeated my skin.  “It’s just wine.  Taste it and write down what it is.  You do it all the time.”  Still, when that first test clock kicked on and the “begin…” command is uttered, it must have taken me 15 minutes to slow my brain down and find my pace.  I have GREAT concern that I made a stupid mistake on identifying the first group of wines I worked on because I had the yips.  I’m thinking I’m killing it and in reality I’m disgraced second baseman Chuck Knoblach tossing an easy out at first base into Section 117 in the stands.  Again, I won’t be able to confirm this until the exam wines get announced.  

The worst part of when the wines get announced is seeing all the ticky-tack errors you made and imagining all the terrible point losses the sin of calling a wine that is revealed to be from Stellenbosch something from Adelaide.  Meanwhile, the bigger issue is more likely to be having called three cabernet sauvignon a group of grenache or something else equally stupid.  The best part is when the Examiner’s Report comes out and reading that.  The tone on some of those reports is so cunty (for lack of a better term, but that’s accurate) that it’s a shock to the system to the non-English education system student.  My English friends are totally unfazed by these reports, so maybe it is just cultural disconnect.  Within the culture of the program is the use of the word “howler”.  This is when someone makes a bad factual error, but the tone is as if a group of people grading you find your mistake a great source of personal amusement.  Reading past Examiner’s Reports you’ll see passages like “There were a number of real howlers amongst some of the less capable students which had many of us on the Education Committee question the basic quality of the people that have been admitted into the program.  Several times while grading papers a question of candidate’s basic intelligence came to mind as misspelled word like “diatomaceous” were common or technical errors in parts per million levels left me aghast.”  I’m not kidding.  You’re trying to pound out three 1200 word essays in three hours that will be combed over with draconian standards and you can get absolutely eviscerated for those kinds of errors you made in the most stressful environment possible.      

This pressure filled environment resulted in a number of my fellow students having self-described “existential crisis”.  I had to help talk a couple folks off the ledge.  You’ve committed so much headspace, time and money to try and accomplish a passing mark, but eventually the question will come to you “Why am I doing this?”.  It is a valid question.  The level of recognition of accomplishing this task is mostly amongst people that have done it or tried to do it themselves.  Nobody really knows what a Master of Wine is, nor do they care.  I mean, why should they?  Most normal people don’t have a working understanding of what a sommelier does or even how to pronounce the word.  How can they possibly understand that you forced yourself to learn a college level understanding of trunk diseases in grapevines in the off chance that you might be asked to write a 1200 word essay on it within a 60 minute time frame in a business hotel in California?  The bigger question they might have, which you will come to yourself at some point as well, is “why?”.  For me, the answer is a riff on why the explorer climbs the mountain.  Because it is there.  Everyone involved in this stupid exercise in self-flagellation needs their own answer to stay on the rails.

So now I’m flying home after hours of delays (Thank you again United Airlines) wondering how I did across the fours days.  I am totally obsessing on the negatives.  I’m like a golfer that is only thinking about the couple shots I shanked that went into the woods, and not the nice shots I made along the way.  The results don’t come until September but the wines get announced in June.  Until then I’m just a fella eating a little bag of pretzels at 338am in Economy Class a mile above Nebraska hoping I didn’t embarrass myself last week.

The quest continues…