Hotelie-On-the-Go

My summer internship search is now up and running — in the past week, I’ve submitted my resume to seven different companies like Union Square Hospitality Group, Hyatt Hotels, PM Hospitality Strategies, and Vail Resorts among others.  Most of the decisions still aren’t in yet (keepin’ the fingers crossed for good news) except for one interview acceptance from Levy Restaurants for a management internship; they’re established in Chicago with restaurants like Bistro 110 and Spaggia — exciting stuff for a Hotelie!

Still, it’s kind of strange looking for internships already, considering I’m still not sure what direction I’m going after the Hotel School; before, I mentioned that I was thinking about either law school, grad school in entertainment management, or getting a job in what I came here to do — restaurants.

Buttttttt, I’m doing my best to decide whether or not I want to put the whole law school idea out of the running.  The main reason I have plans in motion to graduate either a year or a semester early is to save on the gargantuan Cornell tuition costs that I keep piling up; going to law school and dropping another 150 grand just doesn’t seem to make that much sense.  Plus, I’ve been reading up on law school and being a lawyer in general — did you know that lawyers have one of the lowest job satisfaction rates among any profession?!  That really doesn’t seem up my alley at all…

We all know that lawyers are dramatized on TV (Law & Order, Boston Legal, The West Wing, etc.), but in reality, it would just be another boring job.  Even though my interests lie mainly in Entertainment Law, that field is unbelievably competitive and many times, law school grads have to work for free (!!!) just to get their foot in the door at entertainment law firms … and that doesn’t really sound that appealing when you’re $200,000 in debt.  Yuck.

Right now, I have plans in place to take HADM 3385 Business Law with Prof. Paul Wagner.  I hear the professor is really good — even though the class is Monday night, 7p-9:30p — and hopefully, it’ll give me some more insight into whether I should be thinking about law school or not.
So my thoughts might be getting narrowed down at least a little bit — graduate school for entertainment management or going into a job for restaurants, hotels, or the like just as planned before.  It’s going to be an interesting journey.

I actually had a guest speaker today — Ryan Pernice, an Account Manager for Avero (a hospitality technology company based out of New York City) who graduated from the Hotel School in 2007 — who was kind of in the same boat that I’m in now.  Apparently, he was really into restaurants (which I am) and didn’t think he wanted to be in operations — aka. managing a restaurant (like me); he coined the term restaurant-ies for foodies that don’t necessarily want to be in line-level ops.  He was promoted at Avero after 7 months and is on the fast-track to a really nice career.

By the way, he gets to eat at all of his clients’ restaurants … for free.  Mmhmm.

Hopefully, my summer internship will get me to that place eventually.