Well, time has flown by since my last post, as it always seems to do. My semester is quickly winding down and the flurry of taking my last tests, quizzes, and turning in papers has consumed my life these past couple weeks. The biggest part of the last several weeks was preparing for the Dairy Products Judging competition.
I decided early on in the semester to be on the team and had to endure early morning practices (we're talking 6 am, people!) and sometimes late at night (practice that lasts 3 hours= epic fail for my brain usually) for the better part of this semester. For the past month or so, though, Dr. Gillis (our teacher/coach) started keeping a record of all of our scores. We judged 6 products: milk, vanilla ice cream, strawberry yogurt, cottage cheese, butter, and cheddar cheese. For each of these, we would have to individually score the products based on a chart of criticisms and score ranges we had to memorize. It was tough learning all of that information, but it ended up paying off in the end for me.
There were a total of 6 people in the course that wanted to be on the team. Sadly, only 3 undergrads can compete. (Well, there can be an alternate, but Dr. Gillis didn't want there to be one because there's the chance that they score better than the actual team members and that's never good for morale.) I ended up tying Dustin for having the lowest score in the group (lowest=good... We "scored" ourselves by tallying up how many points we missed for each product, so low score= missed the fewest). I was shocked. I thought that if I was going to be on the team that I would have barely made the third spot.
Well, the competition was in Chicago this past weekend... well, actually, just outside of Chicago at the Kraft R&D facilities. We flew from GTR Friday morning at 10 to Atlanta and then to O'Hare in Chicago. Then we got to go pick up our rental car (a big hassle because we had 8 people with us and needed a van... they had to go find one because the one they had didn't work... we waited a LONG time...) and then drive to our first hotel. It was the same hotel that the other 12 teams stayed at (along with a bunch of hockey teams... random, but I think there was a competition that weekend for them, too). We made a quick run to their local grocery store to get a couple extra dairy samples to re-acclimate ourselves before the competition the next morning.
I woke up Saturday morning around 5:15-ish. I was careful not to disturb Athenais (our French foreign exchange student... sadly she didn't make the team, but she did enjoy the free trip!) and got ready. I repacked all of my belongings since I wasn't going to be able to go back to the hotel before they had to checkout at noon. I met Dr. Gillis and my two other team mates, Dustin & Demarcus. We left for the Kraft facility and got there around 7ish. Dr. Gillis had a coach's meeting, but the rest of us got to sit around and wait until 8 when the competition started.
Of course, it started late. Which meant that the entire competition wasn't over until a little after 1 (when they said we'd be done by noon for sure...). After the competition, they collected our score sheets to start grading and all the teams went to go eat sandwiches & get a brief tour of Kraft. The best part of that lunch was the slide show they showed. They had pictures from past competitions (this was the 90th year to have this competition) and it was hilarious seeing pictures of Dr. Gillis (with HAIR!) and Ms. Julie (the lady that helped us a LOT during the last month, even though she wasn't able to make the trip with us).
When then proceeded to the award ceremony. I truly did not expect to win anything. This was Mississippi State's first team in about 6 or 7 years and all of the other teams there had people who had been judging in other regional competitions since they were freshman and were brought up and trained years for this competition... talk about pressure! Turns out, as a team we got third in cheddar cheese, and second in both cottage cheese and ice cream. Demarcus really helped us out as he individually placed in several products and managed to win first place in cheddar cheese (which meant he won money and gets to travel to Milwaukee to participate in a cheese competition there!). Overall as a team, we placed third in all products. This was totally unexpected and really nice. The best part was how proud Dr. Gillis was of us. He's not one to give out compliments, but he was genuinely pleased with our performance (and the fact that we totally shut down Cal Poly-- where he used to teach/coach).
We left Kraft after that and of course after having a couple more pictures taken. We drove back into the city and checked into the Hilton hotel directly across from O'Hare. We then took the tram downtown and ate dinner at an excellent Italian restaurant (wish I could remember the name!). We walked around for hours. By that point, I was beyond tired. When we finally made it back to our hotel, I took a very hot shower and crawled into bed a little after midnight. It was an exhausting day.
We woke up the next morning around 4am since we were all supposed to meet in the lobby around 4:30 to head to the airport. We flew out at 6am and managed to get back to GTR around 10am. It was just quick drive back to Starkville and then I got home, ate a little breakfast, and took a nice nap!
All in all, it was a great experience (even apart from the fact it'll look nice on my resume). It was also nice that individually, I placed 12th out of about 36 people... at least I was in the top half! This trip was much better than any of the culinology trips I went on the past two years... probably because we actually placed. I liked how we weren't allowed to wear anything related to our colleges on the day of the competition and were all assigned a number so that whoever was grading couldn't be biased & change scores. I think what always messed us up in Culinology was that people knew who we were and the judges were from the other colleges that competed (stupid Johnson & Wales!) So even when other teams that that we were going to win that year, we wouldn't even place in the top three!
I had a great time, but it's been weird trying to get back into the swing of things without all the judging team practices I had gotten accustomed to having. It's nice being able to sleep in and also have my afternoons free (for most days). I do miss seeing my team-mates every day though because we became really close. Oh well, I will have classes with them all next semester, so that will be sure to be fun!
