Res Ipsa Loquitur

I know I’ve been posting a lot about the triathlon, Wiley and the occasional cheffy moment I have at home, but not much about Cookin’ School. It’s partly because we’re in classroom classes now, which aren’t as intense as being in the kitchens and bakeshops. It’s also because the baking and pastry students and the culinary students are mixed together in these classes, and I want to hit the majority of the latter in the head with a hammer.

Yes, that tends to be my solution for everything. But anyway...

Here’s a recap, with as much self-restraint as I can muster to avoid ranting about the idiot contingent.

Our Restaurant Law class is already over and done with. It’s a mere three weeks long. I got a 98 on the final, which surprised me since I found much of the class brain-quakingly confusing. Our teacher was a local lawyer who frustrated the hell out of me because he clearly knew the law and was a font of potential knowledge. But he’s been teaching this class forever, cycling through corporation formation, liability and torts like clockwork to a brand new class every three weeks, and it showed.

Instead of being a font he was more like a whitewater river, streaming laws and case studies and random anecdotes in a steady, unyielding deluge. When people raised their hands to ask a question, he’d snap "What?!" or "Now you’re really making a pest of yourself!" He had a really dry sense of humor, and I suspect he thought treating students’ questions like that was kind of funny, but I felt it was time to get out the old hammer and give his skull a good conk or two.

I’d argue that this is the most important course we have at school, because whether we’re in baking or culinary, whether we’re being hired or hiring people, whether we’re the owner or just the cook of the place that serves bad chicken one day, we’re going to run into legal issues. I wish the course had been longer and the teacher had taken it more seriously.

Though, to be fair, I also can’t blame him or any of our other teachers for being on autopilot. The level of disrespect and inattention the culinary kids show them is amazing. All the baking students, plus my friend Fantasia (her nickname from the old blog), an unusually smart and serious culinary student, cluster in the center first two rows of every class. On either side of us, it’s the Visigoths and the Huns.

No, that’s insulting to Visigoths and Huns.

The culinary students carry on their own conversations, text each other jokes, leave their cell phones on and take calls, shout out what they feel are humorous observations at random, snicker at other students’ questions and generally act like they are five year olds who’ve had too much sugar. Included in the crowd is one of the culinary guys I extern’ed with in Vegas who drove me nuts and The Foie Girl. You may remember The Foie Girl from the old blog, a cross between Reese Witherspoon in "Election" and Linda Blair in "The Exorcist." Well, now that she’s back from extern, she’s even worse, adding a tediously faux-macho swagger to her comic arrogance.

As an aside, she did her extern at the place in the Caribbean that I was briefly considering. Had I gone, since they provide assigned housing, she and I likely would have been roommates.

Does anyone else feel a sudden chill?

Anyway, in addition to making grand pronouncements about her greatness, she is now also prone to doing things like entering the classroom and declaring "Guys, I got so shit-faced last night!"

Thanks for sharing. Next time try a little harder and maybe we’ll all be blessed with the success of your fatal alcohol poisoning.

Some friends in academia have mused about what it would be like to be a non-chef instructor at Cookin’ School. I really think it’s its own special ring of the Inferno. Because I think the culinary students, who are arrogant little shits to begin with in general, see non-chef instructors as non-human. Granted, I don’t take the instructors as seriously in part because I know they will not get in my face and scream invective like a chef might, but the culinary brats take it one step further and seem to go out of their way to disrespect them, much in the same way kitchen staff tries to make life hell for the servers in a restaurant. The old "you’re not one of us" mentality, compounded by stupidity and immaturity.

Ok. Deep breath. Stop talking about the morons and get back on topic. To use my favorite new legal phrase about how insufferable the hordes are, res ipsa loquitur. The thing speaks for itself.

My Nutrition class is pretty interesting, but much of it is stuff I’ve read over and over in magazines. It also bugs me how the teacher dumbs down everything. When she gave our most recent assignment, she spent more time assuring us "guys, it won’t take more than ten minutes, tops" than she did really explaining it.

Our Business Management class is another kettle of fish. It reminds me so much... too much... of the various management and leadership workshops I’ve been forced to go to while out in the working world. A lot of talk, a lot of forced participation, very little meat and bones substance. The instructor strikes me as someone who has been doing corporate workshops for years and knows that he’s not going to get through to the brats and so is just going through the motions.

Except for one thing. He calls on me All. The. Time.

Legolas (yes, my beloved baker buddy is back, much to my relief and delight) jokingly said "I feel like telling him, ‘hey, she’s single!’" and Mandilicious, another baking friend, observed "it’s your own fault, because you always answer with something intelligent," but it’s really getting on my nerves.

On Thursday, in fact, he was making some comment about something and suddenly gestured at me and said, "[Pirate], go ahead." I frowned and asked "Why?" He claimed that I "looked like I had something to say." I shook my head and replied "No, I’m just listening attentively, unlike other people."

The hordes gave a collective snicker, but at least he didn’t call on me for the rest of class.

And finally, we drew the short straw as a group and have the same teacher for both our Cost Control and Purchasing Food Class and our Menu Development Class. I’m sure he’s a nice guy, but he really should just retire already. I suspect he was eligible to do so about 20 years ago.

The man takes points off for everything, including if we don’t have 1.5 line spacing in our typed assignments (who on earth even uses 1.5 spacing?) and if, on quizzes, when asked to define a term we do anything less than regurgitate exactly the words he gave us.

I’m actually very interested in both topics, and I think the material itself is useful for someone thinking of opening her own place one day, but damn. Teach the course and don’t use it as an autocratic power trip.

That said, I feel I can’t ding him too much, because he does do more than the other teachers to keep the hordes in line, threatening to take points off when, for example, the girls violate dress code by wearing open-toe shoes (heaven forbid!).

So, yeah, if you detect a little frustration about my current classes, teachers and the hordes that constitute the majority of my classmates, it’s certainly there. I like the material itself in each class, however (except for BizManagement, which is just a load of bollocks), and I feel the classes are of value for that reason.

That said, I can’t wait to get back into the bakeshop (I will in mid-June) and get my hands on some marzipan.

For educational purposes only, you understand.