The saga continues. It’s looking like the only reason I’m going to be graduating on time (pending a passing grade in Finance, obvi) is because of my AP scores from high school, which are being credited towards my free elective requirements. Apparently, I wasn’t really paying attention to what I was doing for the last three years and was going to be several units short of my degree when May 2008 rolled around– despite my attempting to take a red hot course load of 22 credits this semester to make up for it. Ummm, apparently you can’t take 9 classes at a time unless your GPA is like, stellar. Which mine is notsomuch. Who knew?

After some tears and a really long meeting with the Hotel School registrar and some academic advisors, we put our heads together and worked out a nice little plan to get me right on out of here on time. Yeah, it definitely took several rational people to offset my totally unreasonable, it’s-the-end-of-the-world-why-even-bother state of mind when I thought I’d for sure still be in Ithaca finishing up my degree next fall. It’s not that I don’t love it here, it’s just that… well, you know. Staying here an extra semester would not exactly qualify as something you’d call a “victory lap.”

Someone had the brilliant idea to look back at my AP scores, since I’d never bothered to submit them for credit… and lo and behold, the College Board (bane of my high school existence) are the fine folks that are to thank for me getting my diploma on schedule. Glorious.

Anyway, it’s times like these where I thank the goddesses up above for the small size of the Hotel School. Everyone’s watching out for me and taking hours out of their days to sit down with me– I have a team of, like, ten faculty members and administrators making sure I’m doing what I’m supposed to be doing to get my degree on time from here on out. It’s cute; it’s like my own little cheerleading squad… and the cheerleaders have Ph.D’s.

So here’s the schedule we worked out for this semester:

• Strategic Management (this is the only required Hotel School course for seniors, and two lectures later, I still don’t really know what the class is about at all… but I will keep at it.)
• Restaurant Management (a required course I’ve been putting off for several semesters because it involves weekly 7-hour lab practicals in Taverna Banfi. Should be some good times. By the way, any alumni out there feel like giving the school an obscene amount of money so we can have Rhapsody back? Thanks.)
• Strategic Human Resources Management
• Creative Writing
  
• Introduction to Wines
• Casino Operations
  

This puts me at 18 credits, which is rigorous but is still most excellent. I’m happy with it. Plus, Casinos has a required field trip to Atlantic City and Wines involves lots of wine tasting. So I can get drunk and gamble. That’s nice. Yay senior year!

My $4.00 engagement ring was my best friend this summer.

My $4.00 engagement ring was no-fail skeevey-dude repellent at bars. If a skeevey guy approached me and started talking, I held up the ring, said I had a fiancee, and the skeevey dude would walk away. If the dude wasn’t skeevey, I’d hold up the ring, explain it was only there to ward off the skeevey dudes and that I didn’t think he could be classified as such… and he’d think I was cute and quirky (I think) and take it as a compliment.

And then there was the fake wedding.

I was assigned to scope out the Plaza Hotel’s competition. It’s not like I could just call the Mandarin, the St. Regis, the Pierre, or the Waldorf=Astoria and ask them for their wedding pricing and request that they fax a copy of their wedding menu over to the Plaza Hotel offices (duh)– so I had to think creatively.

So, clearly, I lived out half of many little girls’ dreams: I planned a ridiculously lavish wedding with absolutely no budget limitations… and without the whole committing-to-some-loser-for-the-rest-of-my-life part. Oh yes.

I quite enjoyed the whole thing, but the fake engagement ring really left a fugly green mark on my finger. My fake fiancee kind of sucked too– whenever I went to a property walkthrough to check out the ballroom space, he was, of course, always at work and couldn’t be bothered– he was a banking mogul, after all.

The Pierre Hotel Ballroom (where I’d have my fake wedding for $450 per person)

Check out my experience at The Pierre, which I wrote up for HotelChatter. I probably blew my cover when I requested a mini-cheeseburger station during the cocktail reception, but whatever. I had an awesome time.

Also, later on in the summer, HotelChatter dispatched me to the greatest launch party of all time: The Bryant Park Hotel’s release of their in-room sex toy menu, in partnership with swanky adult toystore the Pleasure Chest. Check out my experience at the soiree here.

The Bryant Park Hotel’s Cellar Bar

First of all, you KNOW it’s a bad situation when you’re first reunited with your classmates in the walk-in freezer at school, the coolness-oasis you’ve all flocked to in an attempt to regulate your body temperatures after hiking up from Collegetown to class.

Seriously. It’s been so hot that none of us can sleep, so hot none of us can stand to blow-dry our hair after we shower, and so humid that it doesn’t matter anyway because a blowout wouldn’t last 30 seconds out the door. So what we’ve got here at Cornell University is a population full of sweaty, shiny, tired kids with really bad hair. Aside from those unpleasantries, it’s good to be back at school.

I suppose I should talk about the summer. I was in Manhattan and it was lovely… but I was so incredibly, fall-off-the-face-of-the-earth busy that I could have been in the worst place on earth (the inside of a Croc) and I wouldn’t have noticed. I was working a Monday-Thursday internship at Great Performances, a catering and event planning company, had a job at Hotelchatter.com writing hotel industry news stories daily (which was FABULOUS, hello career of choice), and was doing a consulting job on the side.

So Great Performances… eh. I don’t know– catering and event planning within a larger organization? Not for me. The company is wonderful; they even have a farm in upstate New York where they grow their own produce and have started a program with PS-180 where they teach grade school kids how to cook with fresh ingredients and things (I participated in one of the programs and it was one of the highlights of the summer; also, I was on a farm, alert the press).

But I learned very, VERY quickly that catering in NYC is pretty serious. I don’t really want to get into details about what I didn’t like about the whole thing, but I learned a lot about what I don’t want to do– which is why we do these internships, right?– and I did get to do some cool stuff in the meantime: GP had TONS of high-end clients and I got to attend some pretty ritzy and fabulous events.

I had an issue with the footwear policy and was scolded many a time for wearing open-toed shoes to work. I mean, there is a huge kitchen attached to the offices where GP does all of their prep and recipe testing, so open-toed shoes were a no-no. But come ON… I’m not cooking. I only went in there for Diet Coke. I tried to strike a deal where I would promise not to go into the kitchen if I could wear my summery strappy sandals, but no dice.
During the workday, I was primarily working on the Plaza Hotel project, as GP is going to be doing all the catering for the event space once it reopens. The property has been closed for a long time for renovations, but it’s slated to be up and running in October/November of this year (it had BETTER be up and running, because there are insanely lavish events booked). I WISH I could tell stories about the new Plaza clients– oh my goodness; if these sensible, close-toed shoes could talk…

Anyway, it was a good experience and will never, EVER make the mistake of telling a client who is ready to drop $500,000 on an event that we don’t do Kosher catering (we do), and I now know to do everything in my power to forever avoid a certain high-profile, overly-botoxed NYC independent event planner.
Whatever. I figure it’s all fodder for the tell-all I’m going to pen later on in my life a la Devil Wears Prada. Ok. Yes.

The saga begins. My parents are not going to think this is very funny since they pay my tuition, but if I don’t keep my act together this year, I’m not going to graduate.

That’s right. Last semester, the finance monster (HA 321) was victorious in what I’d thought to be the final round of my epic 3-year struggle with numbers-based courses. This semester, HA 321 seems to be demanding a rematch (translation, I got an F) and until I win this war, I will not earn a degree. Whoops!

I have to re-vamp my whole class schedule before classes begin…lame. In other news, I’m back in Ithaca and have just moved into my FANTASTIC new Collegetown apartment with my three best girlfriends. I will post pictures when legitimate internet is installed and we no longer have to rely on stolen wireless signals and Sex and the City DVD’s for entertainment.

SO, it’s senior year and that is AWESOME. I am unbelievably excited and will give a rundown of my summer as soon as I feel like anyone cares.

So yeah. Blondes have more fun. Sometimes too much fun. Because I got an F.