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!