Thursday, October 25, 2012

Classes I Have Had


I'm in my last semester and out of all classes I have had, I have to say the Hospitality and Tourism Management Internship class is the most efficacy to my future job.  This internship class provided me the opportunity to apply the theory, knowledge, and ideas that I have learned in class to a real world setting.  In addition, this internship allowed me to work in one of the most high respected hospitality cities in the world, San Francisco, and the hotel that I interned at is Mandarin Oriental San Francisco.

Getting into this class has to go through some hard work because of the prerequisite.  Hospitality and/or tourism work experience is required for the internship class.  Students must acquired or finished a minimum of 350 hours of work experience in the hospitality services industry as well as another minimum of 50 hours professional development.  Furthermore, the internship must consist of performing a minimum of 200 work hours.  This is a total of at least 600 hours of working and learning experiences dedicated to the internship course.

The assignments throughout the internship class include a mid-term progress report of how successful I have been at obtaining data for the research portion of the internship project and how supportive my management has been.  I have to attend one of the designated workshops at the Career Center to review my resume or discuss job interviewing skills during the semester.  For the internship, I have to submit monthly time sheets to my instructor.  For the project, I have to decide and agreed by my supervisor and instructor of the topic that I plan to write and it should be beneficial to the company and my education.  Once the topic is determined, I need to define the research problem, collect the necessary data, write/report on the findings, and present the results.  I'm required to make a formal presentation of the project/paper and findings to my supervisor upon completion and before the end of the semester.  My supervisor will then provide feedback and grade the presentation on the evaluation form.  To be honest, I spent a lot of time and effort in this internship even though it was all unpaid; however, the final A grade I got paid off all the hard work.

The departments that I interned at are Food & Beverage and Sales & Marketing.  My goal in the Food & Beverage department is to learn as many positions in the department as possible and then focus on those that fit me best.  The F&B department includes catering/banquet, room service, and restaurant.  During the internship, I assisted catering admin, performed banquet and room services, restaurant hosting and serving; assisted team with wine lists as well as learned POS system, OpenTable.  For the Sales & Marketing side, I mostly assisted the sales team with their admin, so I kind of know how the operation works in the department.  On my second week of the internship, I was lucky enough to sit in one of the meetings with all the department heads and the general manager.  It really opened up my eyes of how a “real” meeting looks and feels like.  Overall I learned and took away plenty of valuable things through meeting and working with different people in this internship.  I learned that leadership/team player and communication skills are very important if you want to be a leader one day.  Working in the real world really need to be a self-starter and take initiatives and let your supervisor know what you want to be and your goals, don’t hide it to yourself. 

6 comments:

  1. Wow! your internship experience seems very interesting. I really like to know what are some obstacles you had faced while working at the hotel and how you had overcome the problems.

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  2. How did you feel about your major after you completed the internship? Is it something that you would like to do for the long run? Last year I was going to do an internship for class credit but the teacher advised against it. He said it was difficult to attain an internship that would meet the requirements.

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    1. To be honest, I felt discouraged to enter the hospitality filed after the internship. Although I did learn a lot, however I found out that I don't like dealing with people rather want to be working behind the scene. I'm thinking maybe I will get into the tourism field since I really like traveling. I don't know why your teacher told you not to get an internship, but to my perspective, I think internship is the best way to start.

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  3. Wow, there is a lot of hours involved with your major! It seems as if this internship provided you with skills that can't be learned in a classroom. Would you think it was a good idea if internships became mandatory for graduation? I had this discussion in one of my MGMT classes and a lot of the students were torn on their decision. After actually completing one, what would your reasoning be for or against it become mandatory?

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    1. To me I would think its a good idea if internships became mandatory for graduation since its a very great learning experience and great ways to apply what you learned in classroom into the real world. I would say internship is to prepare students to help them step out of school. I understand why a lot of students don't like this idea because its too much work and cost money. However, if you think it the other way, you will know its worth it.

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  4. Internship really is a very good way for students to apply the knowledge that they have learned to reality. It also allows students to networking within their professions, cycles; and let them to have more opportunities in terms of getting jobs. I don’t know if the school has internship class for business major students. However, there are a lot of companies offer internships for business students during their senior years. By offering internship to business students, these companies are screening for excellent future employees too!

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