Unit 6 exam - I could cry.

June 6th was my WSET Unit 6 exam for Fortified Wines. It didn't go well.

I have been studying and tasting fortified wines for about 3 months. I made some great study notes excerpted from the Oxford Companion to Wine. I had separate lists of dates and events by type of wine ( Sherry, Port, Madeira ). I had summaries of key facts and dates by major producer. I had tasted ( and really enjoyed !) about 20 different wines. I thought i was ready for the exam.

I woke up early that Monday morning. About 5 AM with thoughts of the exam on my mind. A final review, I figured, a final refresh and I would be ready to go. So I studied for the next 2 hours, had my breakfast, and got ready for my 1.5 hour drive to where the test was being held. I arrived about 1 hour early.

But I was feeling a little tired. I started to drink a can of soda that I had brought, however, it wasn't the normal diet coke that I might drink but was the full-on sugared variety. No No No, my mind screamed. Don't drink sugar when you are tired, you will crash later on when the test is in full force. So I went to get some coffee.
Now normally I am a decaf drinker. I like the flavor and believe that coffee in general can be beneficial but I know I can't handle the caffeine. But I needed the boost, so i ordered a half-caf latte.

Now maybe the drink was half-caf and maybe it wasn't but i got wired. I could feel my body racing, "I can manage this" I thought as I walked into the test. And at first I was OK.

We had 3 wines to describe. The first was clear - a fino sherry, that one I could almost tell just from looking, and of course the particular aromas gave it away. The 2nd was a golden color and not especially bright or clear. I wasn't sure about that one. The 3rd was a light-gold and again from appearance only it looked like a Muscat and I figured I would be in pretty good shape.

I did my best to describe the wines. The Fino and the Muscat VDN were easy. I described the 2nd wine OK, I think, but didn't connect that it was a white port and lost 2 points on that one when i picked the wrong country and region.

This took around 35 minutes. This left only 25 minutes to write the 3 essay questions / paragraphs that remained. ( The whole test has to be done in 60 minutes and you have to describe 3 wines and then write 3 paragraphs on whatever fortified wine topic that is part of the syllabus ). In the weeks prior to the test I had been timing myself on my wine descriptions and I was taking the generally allowed 10 minutes per wine. I had only gone over this limit a little but every minute counts.

I was good on the topics, I was comfortable with all 3 and had even psyched out one that would be on the test - either that or got really lucky - but I had done extra study on the Madeira Wine Company and here was that question on the test. But 25 minutes is not a lot of time, and I started to panic a little. This was bad. My adrenaline picked up, and started interacting with the caffeine that already had my body wired. I was getting hyper. Next my hand started shaking. After about the first paragraph, the shaking was getting bad, and my hand started cramping up. I had hand cramps happen before a couple years ago when I was taking a writing course - but I was able to work through the cramping. But this time the shaking and the cramping together debilitated me.

The 2nd paragraph was messy. I had several times when I would try to write a word and my hand shook so badly that the letters would not form. I stopped. I took a drink of water ( having to hold the bottle with both hands to stop the shaking ). I tried again and like a first or 2nd grade school child I had to print out each letter. I lost considerable time.

By the time i was on the 3rd question, I had only 6-7 minutes left and i could hardly write. My writing is never that good even at its best, but now letters were hardly readable by even me. It was sad. I could cry. If the examiners throw out my paper as unreadable I will totally understand, and I am getting myself prepared for the retake.

This is a much bigger issue, however. Even if I don't get an adrenaline-and-caffeine-cocktail induced shakes, i know that my hand could very well cramp up after about 30 minutes of writing. I remember that I read a couple of weeks ago, a blog from another WSET student. He had written that in order to prepare for his tests, he had spent a lot of time practicing writing. When i first read that i thought of sentence structure, paragraph layout, the usual "tell them what you are going to tell them, then tell them, then tell them what you told them" structure for a good essay. Now I am considering that in a different light.

Other than my writing class, during which most of the time I ( like now ) did my work on a type writer, I only had to do 1 final paper hand-written, because it was a timed test and no computers were allowed. I have been using computers, electronic e-mail, MS Word, or Open Office for probably the past 20 years. Other than grocery lists, I write very little by hand. And this factor is just one of several that helped me to fail the test. ( At least i think I failed. I don't have a lot of hope ).

Other than a re-take of Unit 6, I still have several more circumstances where i will have to hand-write answers and paragraph for an hour or more. Specifically, Unit 1 - coming up in November will require a full 1 hour hand-written essay I can't have the same circumstances befall me again.

So. I now have 3 additional tasks that i have to fit into my schedule.

1) I have to practice writing. I have to retrain those muscles and get them fit once more.
2) I have to speed up the amount of time it takes me to taste and evaluate a wine. 10 minutes is much too slow, even though 3 wines in 30 minutes or 6 wines in an hour is thegenerally allowed time on WSET tests.
5-7 minutes or less should be the amount of time I take. I just need to react a little more, contemplate a little less, and have the required terms just flow from my pen.
3) I have to find a comfortable pen, one that fits me well enough that I am less likely to cramp up. I have big hands and I think a fatter pen might help.

I am never going to drink coffee, any coffee, before a test again. My adrenaline will be enough.

john