Commercial Checkride passed, write up below

Had my commercial checkride today at RNO, oral was about 1 hour since the examiner did my PPL and IR so he had a good idea of what I knew beforehand. Got asked questions mostly about legality of flights, and then some real world considerations like okay it’s completely legal but *would* you fly without insurance? No. How long is your medical good for? What’s the level of medical you need to exercise commercial pilot privileges? Oral wasn’t too stressful, only part where I had issues was he asked me specifically why an airfoil can get colder than surrounding air and become a collecting surface for Structural Icing, I had to look up the definition of aerodynamic cooling and that took a bit. Flight portion was 1.5 hours He told me to expect a soft field takeoff, then at Stead airport (RTS) expect a soft field landing, short field landing, and Power off 180. Then as we’re 1500 above pattern about a mile from the airport he cut my gas and said do something. Well we were lined up for a straight in on Runway 32 so I called short final simulated engine failure on the CTAF and landed it. Just past the 1000s. Got back in the pattern and took runway 8 next. Then we did the soft field, no problem. Short field, it was unstable so I went around. On the debrief on the ground he told me the go around decision was great, but my execution was not. I tried to make it climb too soon before it was ready, so it did climb but not very fast. In his words, “your goal in a go around is not to go up, but to not go down”, so I should have waited to build speed and lift before initiating the climb. Second go, short field done to standards. Then the stressful one, the 180. Done to standards. We left towards the west, there’s a little lake called White Lake there where we did maneuvers. He said to keep doing clearing turns until told otherwise, well after the first clearing turn he said no more clearing turns. We did Chandelles, Lazy 8s, Steep Turns (my hardest maneuver), accelerated stall demo, and Slow Flight. All done well except Slow Flight I definitely messed up, the plane was *too slow* so the very slightest control adjustments would lose altitude. I drifted out of standards a couple times for sure, and the stall horn also yelled a few times Then he had me go back to Reno, intentionally high because he wanted a forward slip to land. This one, I really messed up. For sure. I’ve only done like 10 slips in my entire flying time and I didn’t see it in the Commercial ACS so I didn’t practice it. We were off centerline for a while because I did not put in enough rudder, and it was not a gentle descent. I still put it on the 1000s but on the debrief he really nailed into me how terrible that slip was. He told me to 100% expect it for my CFI ride, and since it’s not in the Commercial ACS it’s not an item to fail on but definitely something I need to master for any kind of flying professionally. His advice on the debrief was to go flying in strong crosswind days more often, since he can tell I’ve been flying early mornings when winds are calm and flying is easy. How he can tell I have no idea. But once I start intentionally pushing myself to fly the plane at its demonstrated limits, I’ll gain much better fine control over it. Of course crosswind landings make for a great way to practice slips too. He’s satisfied, saying there’s no comparison with how I flew for the private ride and now, and while I have improved immensely there’s a long ways to go before I’ll actually get hired. Overall it was a… humbling experience actually. Every checkride, every new rating I come out more humble than before, realizing I don’t know anything yet. For now my brain is fried, I’m going to rest a bit then hop into the instructor written exam materials and go flying specifically on crosswind days to practice landings and slips.