Eating, Sleeping, Living in the Hospitality Industry

I've been absent for a while and believe me I miss this little space I've created on the internet but as you can suspect, real life got in the way. Again.  This time around I'm not upset with it by any means because I've been doing stuff that I absolutely love.  That doesn't mean I haven't been working hard though.

MOS

The first thing I want to mention was Mulvane Old Settlers Days that fell on the third weekend of August as it does every year.  As a member of the American Legion Auxiliary I worked our booth downtown where the festivities was going on.  I spent the majority of Friday and Saturday at the booth with other members.  We sold water and soda for a dollar as a fundraiser for our post that we do every year.  I got the opportunity to interact with veterans from outside of the area that had traveled to the Mulvane area for MOS weekend.

The biggest part of MOS (for the Legion) was the event we hosted at our post on Saturday night.  We hosted the Nick Gibson Band  and held a beer garden.  I was apart of the planning committee and helped to volunteer during the event.  I was tied up with logistical things for the time that I was there and I did not get to indulge in the live music.  Nor did I get to take part in the beer garden, but it's not like I could do that anyway since I'm still a few months shy of 21.

Classes promptly started the Monday after MOS weekend.

School

Because I feel like I'm slacking in school because I left my other school in the middle of the semester and then didn't get back to school until a year after that, I feel the need to play catch-up and graduate a semester early then what the program track has me on.  Sooooo, I'm taking 15 credit hours this semester. That's right, FIVE classes.

Hospitality Law is hands down the toughest class yet and I have no qualms that it will continue to be a tough class.  The first week was basically just learning about all the legal terms and such that go with the court system and the differences between criminal and civil cases (hospitality organizations usually have to deal with civil cases, in case you were wondering).  There's a lot of coursework for this class and we work for three hours every Monday in class on the case studies in our book.

Introduction to Catering is a fun class.  Our instructor gives us different scenarios and we have to come up with either menus, list of items we need to take (for off site locations) or other things.  The hardest part of this class has been figuring out how to remember the equations to find the cost per person for each menu item.  I have it down for the most part but when it comes to figuring the meat cost it gets tricky because of the shrinkage!  I'm looking forward to two different events we're going to: the United Way breakfast that is going to feed over a 1,000 people and the Cisco Food Show.

Facilities Design & Management is currently my favorite class.  For the semester we are creating our own restaurant (or hotel in one student's choice) and we're doing everything from the naming and branding, down to designing the facility with a computer software program.  I plan on making a post with some of my ideas I didn't use for the first part of my project, stuff like concepts and names.  I'm still trying to come up with a slogan for my project so stay tuned in on Twitter because I'm sure I'll tweet it!  Another assignment I'm really interested in getting started on is interviewing a restaurant owner about their thoughts of opening their business up.

Hotel/Motel Operations is my second favorite class because of several things.  There are only five people in the class so we get to discuss stuff in greater detail.  We also do a thing called Morning News where we each find something from the lodging industry to share with the class and we discuss it.  In this class we're doing a class project together since we can't really divide ourselves equally into groups, and we're creating a hotel with all the fixings down to what we would charge for our rack rates.  We're also going to be interviewing general managers and department managers from hotels in the city!

Event Planning I is a hot mess right now but it has potential to be a favorite class by the end of the semester.  We're currently in our "beginning to plan" stage of planning an event for a non profit literacy group that is partnering with our culinary class and doing a program in a local elementary school.  The event we're planning is going to showcase the work of this elementary program and our class is responsible for the planning of everything.  The only thing we know for a fact right now is that we're hosting it at the Hyatt.  There's a lot of work to be done this semester!  In this class we're touring several places in Wichita as event venues.  One of the ones I'm very excited for is touring Intrust Bank Arena since I haven't been there yet for concerts or anything (which is really sad, believe me).

Work

I'm still working but very little. I'm contemplating giving my two week's notice and focusing on school.  I will at some point have to get into an internship too so I'm just wondering when the best time is to cut ties at work.

Life and Other Stuff

My wisdom teeth are killing me.  My mouth has been swollen all week and it hurts to smile.  It's a good thing I didn't work most of this week because I couldn't have smiled.  A classmate told me yesterday that it looked like I had a "resting bitch face" because I wasn't able to smile as much as normal.

Rocky Road ice cream is now my favorite thing.

I got new shoes and they're sparkly.  Like super sparkly.  Now I have two pairs of sparkly shoes.  That isn't enough though. I WANT ALL THE SPARKLY SHOES.

I managed to get lost the other day in Wichita.  It's been a few months since I've gotten myself lost.  I didn't have Margaret (my GPS) on and I thought I knew where I was going. Long story short, I ended up in a sketch part of town and promptly turned around and went back to school.  I was in search of food, I WAS HUNGRY.

November 1st I'm going to a leadership class for the American Legion Auxiliary and I'm super pumped about it!

August 8th I attended and became certified in Field Service through the ALA.  Meaning I can do more volunteer work in local hospitals, nursing homes and other places with veterans.

In October I'm going to Denton, Texas to visit the University of North Texas.  I'm contemplating transferring there when I graduate from the associates program I'm currently in.  It's still a ways off but I'm really excited to see what options are open for the future in this industry.

I think that about covers everything.  Hopefully I won't be gone too long when I post next.  Ideally I would like to post once a week, but that's going to be tough.  So, I guess I'll post when I can!

A Note to My Future Self

Dear Jess,

I don't know when you're reading this, but I'm gonna say it's probably at a time when you're feeling like things are crashing down.  Why else would you start going back and rereading blog posts? Come on, you've done it before and I know your sort of predictable.

Let me let you in on a little secret.  I'm writing this letter to you, future me, when things are crashing down.  Just this week I found out a family friend has a mass in his lung.  My body is being weird and I've been sleeping a shit ton even since I've been faithfully taking my medicine.  This week, my poor memory has been frustrating me a lot more than normal and I have no idea how to strengthen it.  Today, I first found out I passed my classes this semester with flying colors but then found out that I'm academic probation because of my choice to leave my other school mid semester to spare failing out.

It's been a rough week.

You're probably having a rough week.

Here's the thing though. I can mope around and do nothing or I could wipe away the tears of frustration and anger, and kick some ass.  Not literally, of course, unless there's someone who does actually need their ass kicked, then I will do it.  If we let every bad day or bad week run our lives, what would be doing with ourselves? What would we accomplish?

I'm not saying that we need to become a hard and heartless person who doesn't let anything phase us, because that's not who we are.  We're the ones that keep pushing, even when we want to give up.  Remember the first time you walked up the stairs at home after having your hip replaced? Yeah, you'll never forget will you?  You pushed against the want to sit on the ground in the front of the house for the rest of eternity.  Sure you were hopped up on pain meds but you pushed through the pain to do it.  It's so cliche say to you, but I'm doing it anyway because really this is just me talking to myself: if you can get through that year of your life and accomplish so much, you can keep going.

Now, I know this is just a bunch of words building encouragement up to go on and do whatever has you down, because really in a way that's what this ending up as...but on a final note, you don't give yourself nearly as much credit as you deserve.

Just take a step back from it all and breathe.  It'll all be okay.

_________________________________________________________________

Online Classes, Not For Me

What's that you hear?  Oh, that's just me celebrating passing my classes, officially.  That's right, today I found out what I already knew, that I passed the two summer classes I took! What am I doing? Throwing invisible confetti in the air, that's what.

source

I wanted to make this post a few weeks ago, but I didn't.  I didn't because what if I had a change in heart and I suddenly liked online classes? Unlikely, yes, but I thought I needed to wait until my semester was over before I started proclaiming why online classes aren't are for me.  But really, it's something that anyone who knows me would already have figured out by now.

First off, let's just briefly discuss my technology issues.  Beside our internet connection being oh so unreliable, I have a hard time operating my laptop on most days.  But seriously, the main problem with my technology issues is the fact that the only thing reliable about our internet connect is that it's gonna be terrible.  Whenever I have a deadline for anything, I can always count on my internet to suddenly disappear!

I've found after taking my first online class through my school this past spring that there were some glitches and random site shutdowns.  I gave the whole thing the benefit of the doubt, because come on, I was a newb and I didn't know any better.  After this eight week semester of site issues I'm calling it, it's not just me, it's also the site.  Believe me, I'm already frustrated with at least one assignment, don't add onto the load by giving me a glitch prone site to deal with too.  A lot of times that I was stressed out and pushing to meet deadlines was because I had put off doing the assignments because I didn't want to deal with the site that would probably glitch five times in one setting.  It makes for a very unhappy student.

The biggest thing: I forget.  I have a poor memory thanks to my Hashimoto's medicine, but when I'm not forced to get dressed, drive at least twenty five minutes and sit in class, in person I will undoubtedly forget that I was supposed to discussion posts on Thursdays. Or that I have ten assignments for one class on top of that exam due on Monday.  I've tried various tactics.  Agenda, writing all that shit down. It worked, for a while. Sticky noting all that shit all over my room, the refrigerator, the bathroom mirror, even my car.  Again, it only worked for a little bit.  There for a while, the only thing keeping me on top of assignments was my friend Maycie nonchalantly reminding me about school.

In the end, I just didn't like taking these classes online.  Maybe it's because I like being able to talk to people in face when we're having a discussion.  Or maybe it's because if I stay in my pajamas too long I inevitably end up back in bed.  For me, online classes are a thing of the past.  I'm going to avoid them if I can.

What about you? Have you taken online classes? Do you like them compared to normal in person classes?

Word Vomit

I can finally breathe easy. Or at least a bit easier than I have been the last couple of weeks.  Friday I spent most of the day fighting technology at home with pending assignments due and then spending my short shift at work worrying over if I was going to get all of my homework done before the deadline at 11 that night.

Friday was hell.  But you know what, I stayed positive despite rude guests, a terrible headache and news that one of my favorite managers is leaving next month, among other things.  In the end I got all of my coursework finished, and I didn't completely lose my crap at work in front of guests.

I feel like the last three weeks my head has been filling up with all these things that I either suddenly realized I need to do or have remembered a long list of things to do that I should already be doing (I lost my planner and all of my dates for events and such).  I think a lot of it has to do with pressuring myself to get my act together so I can really do well this next school year. The other part of me thinks it might just have to be with trying to please everyone from school, work and the Legion all at once.  But in all honesty, I think it's both of things and a smidgen of CRAZY added.

For the last week all I wanted to do was blog or at least write something short to share with whoever comes across this space.  I've neglected myself that because I wanted to stay on track and stay focused instead of spending hours writing a few posts when I got into the writing groove.  It worked for the most part, except for when I spent some time doing homework thinking about writing instead.

Word vomit. That's what this is, but after the crazy week I've had I feel like I need to get it out of my system. So here it is.

I have the next three weeks free before my next semester of school starts.  Well, I shouldn't say free because I'm still grabbing a couple of short shifts a week and volunteering more.  I'm also focusing on putting together what I'm calling "the career book" to help keep everything from my resume to cover letters and recommendation letters down to notes about job prospects.  I thought this little break between semesters would be a fantastic time to sit down and start putting it all together so when I start interviewing this semester (I'll discuss this more this week) I can have some to lean on!

Also, on this little break, I'm going to be focusing on getting into a workout routine of some sort so I can rely on it when school starts.  Other little odds and ends are finishing out my Summer Bucket List and figuring out how to plan meals for when classes start since I'm going to be working a mid shift and taking mostly night classes (against my will).

I realized this morning as I was waiting for my safety staff meeting to start that I'm trying to cram a lot into these three weeks.  Maybe I should just relax?  I could, but I don't think I would manage anything productive.  I'd probably end up falling into some sort of funk where all I do is lay in bed and watch Netflix.  Don't get me wrong, that sounds wonderful, but I have things to accomplish!

So there's my crazy for the last week or so.  Nothing too important.  Only that I survived my summer classes, which is an accomplishment.

There's your dose of Jess' Crazyy Thoughts, Jess signing out!