Friday, July 2, 2010

A Modified Day

This morning was amazing! Class started at 9:00 a.m. today instead of 8:30 which meant that we had the opportunity to sleep in an extra half an hour. In class we were graced by the presence of two guest lecturers from the Cornell School of Hotel Administration. The first speaker was Stephani Robson who gave a riveting presentation titled “Design Matters.” I learned about the psychological aspect of designing a hotel and how designers look at how their guests use the space. I was introduced to a hotel brand named Aloft, which targets young city-dwellers, and learned that the best business strategy is to look at the holes in service and try to target a demographic that is not being served in the industry, such as business women and young professionals. Our next guest lecturer was Sean Way who gave a presentation on Human Resources. After his presentation, we filled out a survey from the Human Resource Department and we were all entered into a drawing for $25. Unfortunately, I did not win.

After lunch, we had time to work on our memo assignment and then on our group company project. My group finished the rough draft of our presentation today and our plan is to fix it up tomorrow, and then rehearse on Sunday, the 4th of July, at office hours which are from 6-9 p.m. On the 4th of July! Also, the hotel students are presenting our company presentations on Monday, July 5th, while the rest of the Cornell Summer College has the day off. Today, we finished class at 1:30 and our office hours were 1:30-3:30, meaning we got the rest of the day to ourselves.

After dinner Andrew, Chris, Andrew, Alex and I decided to go bowling at the Cornell recreational facility. We had a lot of fun and had a chance to unwind after our first week of college. The Cornellians also got our Cornell sweatshirts today! And tomorrow, I have a brief meeting with my group before the ILC team heads out to our cruise on Cayuga Lake for a brunch. I am definitely looking forward to the weekend.

On another note, one thing I have noticed about dorm life is that the check-in system that the Residental Community Advisors (RCAs) use every night is highly ineffective. They require the students to show up at curfew (11 p.m. Sunday through Thursday and 12 p.m. on Fridays and Saturdays) in the lounge area of the floor and wait in a huge line to simply verify with your Cornell ID that you are present. The entire endeavor takes about 10-20 minutes The only way to avoid this is to head to bed early but you must notify your RCA so they do not panic when you are not present for regular night-check. But if you do this, you go to sleep because if you are still up reading a book or on your computer, you will get documented. Good night!

1 comment:

  1. It looks like you are very busy there! It looks like that is a very rigorous course you took. I mean you are devoting the day our country was declared independent in a hotel working on a project!
    How is it going there! With your busy schedule, did you meet new friends, or even have time to have snacks!
    I feel bad for you guys and the lights out policy. The policy they have here is that by 11:30 Sun-Thurs, 12:30 Fri-Sat, we have to stay on the floor, but we can be awake and roam around the entire floor, which is really big! Even check in is just tell your RA your in and thats it.
    It looks like Cornell is a lot harder to live in than Brown, but it at least forces you to budget your time wisely.

    Hope you are having some form of fun!

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