It is tremendously exciting when you decide to leave
familiar ground, take a chance to learn something new or start something
personally significant. The excitement is also accompanied by extreme
self-doubt, strangeness and performance anxieties. If you are like me, there
are moments when you lose your normal swagger and feel clumsy, like a shaky
youngling trying to stand up right after birth. I've been on this
roller-coaster before and experienced it anew three weeks ago when I started as
the student of a 5-month Baking Science and Patisserie Diploma at a baking academy. The journey so far has been absolutely thrilling, to say the least.
But, it has also been nerve-racking to interpret a somewhat alien language.
In order to not lose my nerve in the early stages of an
intensive course such as this and be on my game, I started to list a few to-dos
and not-to-dos. I am hoping they will prevent me from curling up in the fetal
position on the floor at the end of my first month.
1. Figure out the 'tea' situation: Learning where
the tea is, is a good strategy. It's also important to figure out the unwritten
rules of the school that, if violated, may make people go ballistic. When is
that 15 minute break? Which shelves are communal? Who washes the cup? At the baking academy I attend, there is a full-fledged cafe on the ground floor and our classes are
conducted on the first floor. Is it ok to buy a cup of tea from the cafe like
a guest? Be a sponge, and watch how people are doing things. And lastly,
there's nothing wrong with taking your own tea bag and then asking for a cup of
hot water from the cafe.
3. Form your ‘Oh Shit’ Team: Since feelings of
anxiety are amplified in this stage of development, you may forget to carry a
dusting cloth along or worse, miss something critical related to grooming
(after essential rules of personal presentation have been made clear on Day
One). You may also place a full tray of beautifully kneaded dough in the
proofer instead of the freezer. Finding true OST members who are ready to
rescue you during such moments will give you a safe place to stand for a while.
4. Test that first dish at home: Generally, when
you are doing something new, it will not work perfectly the first time. But in
that very first class, when you make perfect doughnuts such as you can see in
the pictures here, you have got to be skeptical and execute it at home all by
yourself to know for sure if you can reproduce the recipes without an
instructor giving turn-by-turn directions.
I’m pleased to report that, with no
one reminding me that tablespoons are bigger than teaspoons or to not over
prove the dough, I successfully baked half a dozen doughnuts a couple of days
later.
This list is to be continued in the next post. I know that my ‘don’t go into the woods’ dreams will continue for a little while longer but ah, learning is growth is joy!
Priya, this is a fantastic blog post. Keep writing..
ReplyDeleteThank you for reading and for your encouragement, Anitha.
ReplyDelete