School's in Session

These past two days of classes have felt so long and tiring compared to my whole week at home of doing nothing haha. I am taking 5 classes this trimester, I had to join a special honors program to be able to do this, and make sure I stay on track to graduate next Spring. I wanted to write down my first impressions of each class so that I can look back in May and see how accurate I was with my gut feeling about the class.

Facilities Operations - The topics in this class don't exactly seem like my cup of tea. They seem dry and boring. I understand the concept that it is important to understand both the front and back of the house in order to effectively manage people in a hotel or other facility, but still ... just seems boring, especially since my professor is very monotoned.

Human Resource and Diversity Leadership - Professor started the class by asking, "is this Circus Performance 2008?" I thought it was funny. 3 cases studies and 3 open note, open book test. Seems simple enough, but I have still heard that this class can be tricky. Seems like I can learn beneficial things about what to look for in companies that I am interested in working for and what companies are looking for from me.

Advanced Hospitality Sales Seminar - This is the first time this class has been offered and there's less than 20 students in the class, I have never been in a class that small. Since the class is only offered once a year I got a waiver for the class prerequisite to instead take marketing as a co-requisite and I was happy to find out that I am not the only one so any information that was taught in marketing will be reviewed. In this class I am particularly excited about working on my networking skills and our class is planning our own networking event with the Hospitality Sales and Marketing Association International New England Chapter.

Negotiations and Agreements - The first thing I noticed is that I think my professor talks like he is giving a motivational speech. Not that it is a bad thing, it's just something I have never seen in a professor before. I think being able to negotiate is a skill that every one can use in life and I hope that I really get something out of this class. My issue is that my professor wants us to have a 3 ring binder to put everything in, print out all the PowerPoints for class, and bring a highlighter to highlight in the PowerPoint notes. Not everyone learns the same way, and those techniques are definitely not the way I work. I am left handed, all binders do are get in my way. If I have notes printed out in front of me instead of actively copying notes down, all I do is daydream. I do not highlight any of my notes until I begin to study so I can sift through all of my notes and decide what I think is important from the whole rather than just concentrate on what is already highlighted and overlook the rest of the notes. So I don't know exactly how this is going to work out...

Strategic Marketing - Another smaller class with a bunch of annoying kids behind me that talked the entire time, including one kid who deemed that he was probably the smartest kid in the whole class. Ooooook. Anyway, since I am taking the advanced sales class at the same time, maybe it will actually be beneficial to me since I will hear some of the material twice. However the 40 pages marketing plan and presentation, sounds like it is going to be rough.

Okay, enough about school! One more day left of week one!

xoxo

Holly