Entries Tagged 'Education' ↓

Columbia University made history this week when they named Norries Wilson the first black head football coach in Ivy League history. He’ll take over a Columbia program that hasn’t had a winning season since 1996.

The former Connecticut offensive coordinator was introduced at a news conference Monday at Columbia’s Manhattan campus, a day after being hired by the Division I-AA program.

The Lions were 2-8 overall this season and winless in the Ivy League.

“I want to say that we’re going to be successful in football here at Columbia,” Wilson said. “A lot of people don’t believe that. A lot of my friends call me and say, ‘Coach, what are you doing?’ And I say, ‘Well, we’re going to go win some games.’ We’re going to teach them how to win and leave them with a great experience as far as playing football.”

Columbia hasn’t won a league title since sharing the crown in 1961.

Wilson replaces Bob Shoop, who was fired on Nov. 20, a day after a 52-21 loss to Brown. Shoop was 7-23 in three seasons.

Wilson had spent the last seven season as an assistant at UConn and the past four seasons as offensive coordinator for head coach Randy Edsall.

In 2004, Wilson’s offense led the Big East in scoring and rushing. The Huskies slipped to second to last in total offense this season with injuries forcing them to use three different quarterbacks.

I used to be amused by stories of (mostly rich, pampered, white) people who checked into hospitals suffering from exhaustion. But honestly, if I had it like that, that would be a wonderful vacation right about now.

Friday night I completed a long journey that began with an idea more than a decade ago. I finally completed my culinary school externship requirement, all 210 hours of it, when we closed the kitchen at 11:00 pm.

Officially, I did 212 hours, that started on August 17, done 16 hours a week at three nights a week. This in addition to my 9-5 job during the day. The externship came after 11 months of going to school full-time while also working full-time. The job was Monday through Friday, culinary arts all day Saturday and Sunday, culinary management, Monday, Wednesday and Thursday nights after work. That started in August 2004 and ended in June of this year.

I spent the remainder of June, July and part of August relaxing by just doing my day gig before school reminded me, none too subtly, that if I didn’t start the externship soon, I would be dropped without receiving my diploma. I took the hint and found a location and have been at it ever since, up until Friday night.

I wish I had decided to do this, oh, maybe 20 years ago, when I had more stamina, but all the same, I am surprised at how fast the time flew and proud of myself for getting through it. About 10 years ago, when my acting career was starting to plateau, I asked myself what else would I like to do that would be creative but perhaps more in demand than a show business career. I’ve always enjoyed cooking and began exploring culinary schools way back then, but for various reasons (mostly financial) never acted on it until now.

My day job afforded me the means to make it happen, but I still had a psychological barrier to overcome. Could I work and go to school and not kill myself? Well, the answer is a qualified yes.

I am a mental and physical wreck right now. I crave about a month of uninterrupted sleep. I’ve lost weight largely from only eating one good meal a day. I’ve got achy knees, strained muscles in my back that have enabled my chiropractor to purchase a home through the regular visits, and a perpetually dazed look in my eyes that won’t go away easily.

The past two weeks have been particularly stressful. I could see the light at the end of the tunnel and decided nothing was gonna stop me from completing this task, not even illness. And this was my two weeks to get sick. The late fall temperature change left congestion in my chest and a raw throat I haven’t been able to shake. This past Wednesday, I had to conduct a training at work and was talking for the better part of four hours. By Thursday, I had no voice at all. For a guy who used to make a good living doing voiceovers, to not be able to speak can be pretty disturbing. I’ve got a little of it back now however. Just imagine if Kathleen Turner and Harvey Fierstein had a love child, that’s about the way I sound.

And while I’m physically banged up, the rest of my life is in somewhat of a shambles as well. My apartment is a fucking mess. A_fucking_mess! I just haven’t had time. Haven’t paid bills in a while either. I’ve got plenty of money in the bank. I just haven’t had the brain power to sit down and see who is owed what. And for the remaining few people who still consider me a friend, I really owe them phone calls and visits. I’ll need to spend time reconnecting.

I also have to reconnect with my love for cooking. Truth be told, if you ever want to hate cooking, do it professionally. There is a certain assembly line nature to the work that cuts out the creativity for the sake of expediency. The executive chef gets to be creative. Those of us who execute his vision just follow the recipes. I need to get away from it for awhile, then go back in a kitchen and just experiment.

While I won’t miss the long hours, I will miss my co-workers at the restaurant. There are some fine, very hard working men and women working in the kitchen and among the wait staff. Most in the kitchen are immigrants from Latin and Caribbean countries. I was surprised at how easily my high school Spanish came back to me and how useful it was. The world-reknowned New York restaurant scene would cease to exist were it not for immigrant labor, many of whom are undocumented. For relatively low wages, they easily work ten times harder than most native born Americans. I have much love for those guys and will genuinely miss them. Now, if only they had ownership and management that truly supported their efforts and knew how to run a restaurant.

I’ll close now, but to show you how tired I am, it took me all day to write this entry. I had fleeting moments of energy and clear thinking and couldn’t have done it any faster. I’m off to rest.

At least for the time being, I have my weekends back. I finished culinary school on Saturday. It was a long day too. Because we lost a day to snow several weeks ago, the entire schedule was pushed back. We had to have our final class, then our written exam, then the practical exam from 9-5, followed by our graduation reception from 6-8. It was a 12 hour day, but a fun and successful one.

For the record, I got a 97 on my written exam and a 93 on the practical. If you’ve ever seen Iron Chef that’s kinda how the final went. We were given some ingredients and told to create something in 2 hours. I also got an A- on my module project (which will become part of my restaurant concept for my management studies).

Then the reception afterwards was a lot of fun. Family members came from all over, along with good friends from far and near . They told us our graduating class probably had more invited guests than any previous one.

I still have to complete 210 hours of an externship somewhere, but that will happen after I rest. For a few weeks at least I’m sleeping in on Saturday and Sunday.

Update: In the words of Emeril Legasse, “Never trust a skinny chef.”

I sat down and calculated that I spend 40 hours at work and another 25 hours at school, over 7 straight days each week. I sleep an average of 5 1/2 to 6 hours a night. About an hour to an hour and a half a day is spent commuting to and from work or school. That leaves 54 hours a week or 7.7 hours a day for me. And some of that is spent doing stuff like homework, showerin’, shitin’ and shavin’, eating, or vegetating in front of the tv or computer.

I’m almost half way through the cooking program at school. The management program is just a month behind that. It’s amazing how time has flown by. I’ve adjusted mentally to the grind, but physically I’m still challenged. Saturdays and Sundays are spent standing for the better part of 8 1/2 hours, literally whipping through the preparation and cooking of six dishes a day, so much so, I couldn’t even tell you what we’ve made.

Round about 1:00 each day, everybody hits the wall, where fatigue just overwhelms you. But it’s shortlived because there is still four more hours of cooking. Sunday is a real bitch because of the exhaustion from Saturday. Then the wall comes at 11:30 or 12:00. And I am soooo not a morning person. When that alarm clock goes off at 6:30, my body still aches while my mind realizes I’m starting my seventh consecutive work day of a week that never really ends. It just melds into the next.

Monday morning brings some relief because at the office I don’t have to work as hard. But I also don’t get home until after 9:00 pm because that’s one of my three management class nights. There’s often reading due night to night.

If I had it to do over again, I would have done this twenty years ago when I had more stamina. But I wasn’t really focused enough to do it then. I am now and fully accept the fact I have to endure this in order to get to where I want to be later.

The saving grace is I’ve got lots of time off from my paying gig that I have to take. Vacation is Decemer 16 to January 2, but I’ve still got some classes in between so it’s not a total time off. I’m just gonna sleep late and do a lot of nothing.

P.S. Did I mention I’m maintaining an “A” and got 100 on a quiz Sunday? If I’d worked this hard from kindergarten through college, I might have made something of myself!

Today was the end of Module 1.

Back on August 28, we started the first of 21 lessons, two-a-day each weekend, that made up the module, the first of five through next April.

Mod 1 ended with an exam, a written and a practical. We spent much of Saturday reviewing what would be on the written part and preparing for the required cooking in the practical. A lot of talk about soups, and grand sauces and their derivatives, aromatics and garnishes, stocks and proper ingredients for making them, temperatures, thickeners and a lot of French terms. Nothing too terribly hard, it’s just keeping it all straight in your head. That while trying not to get nervous thinking about the practical.

For that, we each had 90 minutes to make about a quart and a half of cream of broccoli soup, and a small amount of mayonnaise. And I’m not talking Campbell’s or Hellman’s. Everything made from scratch. Working individually, the 15 of us started at 5 minute intervals and had set times when we were to present our finished work to the instructor. Present late, and it’s points off.

Work smart, work efficiently, clean as you go, no talking or helping each other, budget your time wisely. It’s amazing how quickly an hour and a half flies by, when you’ve got to gather all mis en place, get you equipment, jockey for burner space on your assigned stove, start your chicken stock, make your roux, cool it, whip the lemon juice, egg yolks and oil into a mayonnaise and refrigerate it, add the roux to the stock to make your velouté, simmer that, measure, clean and chop your onions, leeks, celery and broccoli, sweat them, season and skim the velouté, combine the vegetables, simmer that, remove the solids and pureé them, add them back, simmer some more, strain the whole thing, add cream, warm a bowl, put it on a plate, ladle it in, clean up your work area, and make sure you did it all following proper sanitary procedures.

Miraculously I did it, on time. Cut some corners to do it though. Would have liked my vegetables sweated a little more and all of it simmered longer, but I got a 90 on the soup, and a 90 on the mayo, so I’m happy. Damned if I didn’t get an 86 on the written though. I’m bummed, because I knew that stuff. But I did get an “A” on my class paper handed in last week. I did it on the late Patrick Clark, one of the first recognizable American chefs and still one of the best known Black chefs to ever work in the industry. Our instructor had an opportunity to work with him and so I may have scored some points in that regard. He said he appreciated reading it.

Next weekend starts a new module with a new instructor, where we focus on grilling; meats, fish and vegetables. Sometime in November, there’ll be another exam and practical.

Monday, Columbus Day, is a holiday from work and school. I’m gonna sleep in.