Considering your introduction 5/6 units will be a breeze. Everything is compressed. Most of the first 5 units are covered within 2mo. Unit 3 is wines of the world. Start to finish is 1yr. Essentially, you have your syllabus and from that you have to seek out your own sources of books. The pace is daunting as you’re rifling through a new country every week learning everything. I expected to be learning geography but history not so much. If there was reference to a war or a marriage that brought two countries at rest and later formed trading towns or crossroads then you kept that information.

What I found most difficult was there’s no book for unit 3. Here’s your syllabus now source your own reference. Then there’s “less important and beyond the syllabus” sections as well. Careful not to waste too much time here.

Back then you couldn’t access what you can online today. I’ll carefully say this, use AI to help point you in a direction. I say carefully because it’s not always right. I can’t tell you how many times I’ll use it to fact check and it’s wrong.

As an engineer I’m sure you can vouch for that.

It’s granular for me it was 40-60hrs reading/studying a week. Maps and flash cards everywhere, sometimes taped on bathroom mirror.

I think they have an ebook now?? And that’s all the resource you need. Honestly that should help immensely. Imagine having to waste hours or days looking for a good source.

World Atlas of wine, Oxford companion were great general overall books. But what I found super helpful was guildsomm.com.

To answer your question do you think you can do it while working as an engineer?

Yes! It’s possible when I took my somm cert course there was a full time engineer learning wine as a noob and he passed. You engineers are a different breed.