Sean Kuchman
Externship Final Essay
Final Essay
How has this externship contributed to your personal and professional development? Using your
current skills, the information learned from the discussion boards and evaluations, describe how this
externship experience will improve/impact your personal and professional life.
Honestly, Chef Bryant, I still do not fully understand what the point of the Externship was. From
the beginning, it was not really explained well. We were told we would have to extern at a restaurant,
and the point of it would be explained at a later date. I asked several times what it was for. Valuable
experience in a restaurant, sure. But I was already working at a restaurant. Was I supposed to be taught
something from management? At my location, they have precious little to teach me about managing
people. I was a supervisor at a Fortune 500 company. The #2 insurance company in the country. I can
always learn more about the restaurant business, that is for certain. But what was I supposed to learn in
Externship? I still do not fully understand the point.
That is my feeling. My emotion. I feel like it was a waste of resources and everyone’s time. But
then, I realized, I might have missed the point. No, there is no major life altering lesson to learn here.
There is no instructor to quiz what we are learning and mark us down. There aren’t tests or homework.
Instead, it is a peer to peer meeting of the minds. It is our collective classroom and exchanging of ideas
and lessons learned through our experiences. I realized, I had been looking at this all wrong. I was
expecting some great lesson, some giant thunderclap revelation. But it never came. Instead, there were
a hundred little thunderclaps. Little lessons learned over time. From my peers, my competition, my
contemporaries.
The people that had the best lessons to teach. So, how will this externship impact my
personal/professional life? Simple, it opened me up. I was very closed minded, very aware of my own
power and skill, but not aware of what lessons I still have to learn. I do not always listen to my coworkers. I assume that I know more, and therefore I have nothing to learn from them. I assume that I
am so good in that kitchen, that they benefit from my presence. They take lessons from me, they learn
from what I do when I cook. I fail daily to see that I too can learn from them. I can take lessons from
anyone. Anyone can cook, anyone can make food that is enticing. But to be a Chef is to be a student of
the craft. A master at learning how to always improve.
I do not know everything, and even though I am humble at times, for the most part I am an
arrogant ass. Especially when people give me complements. It inflates my ego. But, through this
program I learned how to listen, how to hear and how to get better. I learned that the best Chef isn’t the
one that knows everything, but the one that can surround himself with the best people. He can learn
from them, even as he is their leader. He or she can become truly great by not listening to the sound of
their own voice. By squashing their own ego, becoming a piece of the machine and taking pride only in
what they produce. That is the mark of a great Chef.
This externship has made me a better person. Instead of being quietly arrogant, I am now loudly
humble. ‘I try’ is my motto. And it is not to sell myself short. It is so that I remember that even though I
am confident in my abilities, it is so that I remember that I can only get better by taking lessons from my
contemporaries. Everyone has value, not just the one that went to school. Even though I might know all
of the techniques, and have the best knife skills, does not mean that there is no value to be had by
people in the kitchen with less training than myself. I might know the mother sauces, how to make a
terrine and a chicken mousseline, but that is not the end of learning. I read somewhere that in Karate,
when you achieve Black Belt status, they consider you then to be a serious student. When I receive my
toque on May 18th, I too will then be considered a serious student. I still have much to learn.
Personally, what I have taken from the externship is that I still have the ability to learn. I worry
sometimes because I am getting older that I might not be able to learn new things or retain them that
well. I worry that this is a young man’s game, and I waited too long to get into it. I look back at 7 years
ago when I almost enrolled at CIV, but decided at the last minute to not enroll, I wonder where I would
be and I kick myself for not doing it. I was most likely not ready, then. This experience has taught me
that I am ready. I am good, and I am going to be great. I am going to be a great Chef. This experience
taught me that I am ready for Disney, I am ready for anything.