You know what fucking pisses me off? How passive I have been with my MW studies.
Some background:
2004 – Discover wine via a RadioHead concert at MSG
2005 – Start WSET studies while working as an i-banker at JPMorgan.
2008 – Leaving banking. Spend the summer living in Paris; start studying wine more “seriously”. Take a part time wine retail job in the fall.
2009 – Officially join the wine industry full time as a sommelier.
2010 – Realize I hate working restaurants and join a distributor
2011 – complete WSET Diploma exams
2015 – Move to the supply side.
So while I’ve stumbled into the wine industry, my pursuit of the Master of Wine has very much been conscious. And here I am…six years after starting the program and I have absolutely fucking NOTHING to show for it.
I joined during the 2011/2012 year and despite passing Stage 1 (sounds like cancer, doesn’t it?), I have wandered through my studies and have not passed either Theory or Practical since then.
Which brings us to today:
2016/2017 –In the past year I have not only moved to a new city where I know no one except my hunk-of-man-meat, but I had an awful employer in the fall of 2017 so I started another new job just a few months later in December 2017. Am I ready for the exam? Fuck, no. But I still have two attempts left.
And that’s what pisses me off!!! My passive attitude!
That attitude of “well, I’ll give it a shot but I still have X many attempts left.”
This is me, super angry. Also? I just went to the dentist.
How the fuck do I think I’m going to somehow ‘do my best’ and pass this excruciating difficult examination to demonstrate my mastery of the global business of wine.
Even more annoying? Between course fees, books/magazines, wines to taste and travel, let’s conservatively say I’ve spent $10,000 per year or $60,000 towards the MW and I have nothing to show for it. Not a fucking thing. Sixty thousand fucking dollars.
So all of this? Fucking pisses me off.
