I’ve been avoiding making the final updates to my blog because, well, every time I sat down to write, I was reminded of a fact I wasn’t quite ready to face: I GRADUATED.

No, I KNOW, right? I am a Cornell graduate. That’s me in that photo on the right. At graduation. I have a diploma, which I made my parents take away so that I would neither destroy the most expensive piece of paper I will ever lay my grubby fingers on nor be forced to look at the tangible evidence that the best years of my life thus far have come to an end.

I will say this: I made it out of the Hotel School with not one single credit to spare. Ha! But I passed finance (with a D, but that is neither here nor there) and knowing I worked my ass off this semester really made the Commencement festivities all the more satisfying.

Now, Senior Week was a sloppy mess. I literally could not have spared a single moment to sit down and reflect on anything, and I think that’s the reason why there’s a big space between the last day of finals and Commencement weekend — the idea, I suppose, is to let all the seniors drink and party so they don’t have any time to realize that in a matter of days they will be thrust into the vast, mythical nebulous nothingness that is the Real World. Or maybe that’s actually the reason we were drinking all week. Meh, who knows. Point here: it was GREAT.

Then came Commencement weekend. Maya Angelou, in all her crazy awesomeness, was a fantastic speaker on Saturday during Convocation, but nothing she could have said and nothing I could have ever imagined could have prepared me for the experience of Sunday’s Commencement ceremony.

Words could never do justice to the things we all felt during Commencement. We all cried more than once that day, and nobody was able to articulate what they were feeling or whether the tears were happy tears or sad tears. We had this unfamiliar knot in our stomachs; a bittersweet potent cocktail of enormous pride, overwhelming happiness and debilitating terror.
That morning, in all our funny graduation regalia, three of my best friends and I walked toward Schoellkopf stadium from the Arts Quad with the rest of the Hotel School. Along the way, we passed the Board of Trustees and President Skorton, cheering and smiling, and almost all the Cornell Faculty members who had these huge proud-parent type grins on their faces, calling out to congratulate each one of us as we walked by. As we got closer to the stadium, the entire Statler Hotel staff was there to cheer us on. I can say, without much doubt, that the Procession is something I will remember forever and one of the best moments of my life.

And then we walked into the stadium and saw the crowd and it was all suddenly so real.

The following days were the toughest. Between hoeing out my apartment, shipping all my crap, and saying goodbye to the people who had, more or less, become my second family over the last four years, I was left bewildered and shellshocked by the end of the whole thing. And all I could think was holy crap: I am a Cornell graduate.

First, I am alive. Sorry for the lack of updates, but I literally need every single credit to graduate on time, and when you’re dealing with finals and/or papers for seven (!!!) classes while trying to navigate the senior-class event & celebration schedule, well … little luxuries like sleep, showering and blogging must be sacrificed in the name of passing Finance class. In hindsight, I should have taken half the courseload and would have been better off taking an extra semester here — because, much to the dismay of my parents, I refused to give up any of my on-campus activities. But all that is another story for another day, and extra semesters ain’t free. Anyway, I’ll be back in full-force soon.

Ah, Hotelie Senior Prom. As the Hotel School has long been teased for its high school-like structure — small size, intimate classes, lockers in the hallways and a healthy gossip circuit — the seniors [independently of the school!] have thrown themselves a Hotelie Senior Prom to appropriately celebrate their reputation as well as their own awesomeness. I could fill an entire book with the events that transpired at Hotelie Prom last week, so I’ll sum it up by saying that taking all the senior Hotelies — who, individually, are traditionally the life of any party — and throwing them together in one room with formal wear, music and refreshments results in … the world exploding. Below, a shot of the girls (and the animal print makes an appearance once again):

And last night, another prom! The Class of 2008 started a new tradition, a Cornell-wide Senior Class prom held in the incredible Duffield Hall atrium space. Open bar + charity + pretty outfits = amazing, of course, but there was more to the experience than that.

I was on the Prom Court (giggle!) and the dozen (or so) of us on Court went up on a balcony overlooking the whole prom for the King/Queen crowning ceremony. As soon as we got up there, though, the entire place busted out in the Alma Mater together and from where we stood, we held hands and looked down to see the whole graduating class singing our school song together. It was just so … moving.

I recognized so many faces in the crowd and realized just how much this place has given me, how profoundly Cornell has changed me and how truly unforgettable every moment of the last four years has been. It was a sad moment, but, truly, a fitting end to my four years here. I guess it’s ironic that this moment occurred while I was teetering on my high heels, wearing a dress and standing on a balcony inside the atrium of an Engineering building on a Saturday night, but it was a memorable moment nonetheless. I understand how potentially lame and Tour-Guidey this may all sound, but feeling such a connection with my Cornell graduating class was one of the most heartwarming moments of my college experience. . . even though I didn’t win Prom Queen.

I think the city of Miami and I just aren’t meant to be.

After last year’s grand adventure that went down with notable vacation-ruining contributions by Royal Caribbean, US Airways and the city of Miami, I was certain that my travel karma was golden this year. I figured things would be perfect since we were going straight to Miami and back again; no cruises, no connections, not a whole lot of room for complications, getting stranded or general unpleasantries.

And yet.
12 of us (10 hotelies plus my two non-hotelie roomies) planned a trip down to Miami and booked 2 rooms at the Sea Coast Suites. Being savvy hospitality students (in fact, the savviest of savvy hospitality students — the student GM of the Statler Hotel — was with us), one would think that a $300ish bucks for 6 nights would be enough for a little red flag action in our pretty little heads, but no. Really, we figured we could deal with a slummy hotel and spend all of our leftover cash at bars and nice restaurants. And trust me, we did — and we had an AMAZING time on South Beach and even our flights with JetBlue were excellent…. but the hotel? Questionable. Very questionable.

The hotel was, like — a mixed use development, if you will — half condos that people rent year-round and half hotel rooms. We were Spring Breakers, so we weren’t really asking for all that much — a couple beds and some towels and we would have been all set. When we checked in to our HUGE rooms with full kitchens and 2 bedrooms and a balcony with an ocean view, we were happy campers. We even had a refrigerator to store our adult refreshments and big bottles of water! Awesome!

On Thursday morning, our happy camper sunburned, boozey sleep was interrupted at 9 am by something faint and annoying that sounded like an alarm clock down the hall. We opened the door to our room and, turns out: a fire alarm! Good one! We were plenty pissed to have to walk down 15 flights of stairs, but then when smoke was billowing into the stairwell around floor eight we picked up the pace a bit. We stood outside with the fire hoses and all that mess, some of us in ratty, gross clothing that was not really fit for public display, and we watched as a big ol’ chunk of the building (on the opposite side of the fire, no less) fell off and landed inches away from some other people. Oh, ok then.

Apparently, the police and firemen who were dealing with the fire also decided to do a little checky-check on other things around the hotel — and found out that hi, this was actually not licensed to be a hotel at all! Never had been! So hey, guess who had to legally peace out of the hotel the next morning? Yes, all the hotel guests. They moved us to a more expensive hotel down in South Beach and refused to pay for ANYTHING — we actually ended up paying more for that last night and weren’t compensated for, you know, having to pack up all our stuff and lose a whole day at the beach while we were busy a) fighting with them b) being told we were very aggressive when we were fighting for some sort of, like, explanation and c) watching a front desk agent cry (I told them I was a hotel reviewer, which, you know, is sort of true; they did not enjoy that).

I mean, okay. The story of the discussions that transpired between a group of 10 hotelies and a couple of assistant managers (who refused to speak to us until one finished her meeting, which we later found out was a scrumptious solo feast of chicken and rice in her office) is actually sort of hilarious. Another story for another time, kids.

But aside from the fire and the building falling down and being evicted because oops they were running a hotel illegally, Miami was AMAZING. Here we all are, being happy:

Since turning 21, I feel like I’ve gained roughly 500 pounds of straight-up booze weight. And if it’s not the bars that are doing this to me, it’s all the vino I drink (and love and then go out and buy) in Wines class. Or the fact that my friends and I sometimes go sit in Statler’s Regent Lounge after class to discuss case studies…over beer.

Or maybe it’s not booze weight at all. Maybe it’s HA 305.

Yeah, probs. Being a member of the Taverna Banfi Dessert Menu Development Team (for 305, Restaurant Management class) has had its pros and cons. For instance, pro: tasting the current dessert menu at the fat kid fest of the century was a PMS-ing girl’s dream. Con: we left feeling vomit-trocious at the end. Pro: We only have to work four shifts in the restaurant as opposed to the eight shifts required of those who don’t do a team project. Con: I think this dessert menu stuff has had us spending even more time in the kitchen than those extra four shifts would have.

And I’ve said it before and I’ll say it again: I am a complete catastrophic grade-A hot mess in the kitchen. I get really stressed out and, uh, stress makes you want to eat chocolate (and by “you” i mean “me”) and hit Rulloff’s on the way home. My team has been totally supportive and patient and awesome in the kitchen and because I really think my messing up everything edible has a lot more to do with confidence and previous food lab trauma than with skill, there have been no major disasters thus far.

Anyway, our team has held two preliminary tastings (with the restaurant’s Powers That Be) where we’ve presented our proposed items for the new dessert menu. We started with ten desserts and narrowed those down to eight, and our final tasting to cement the top six-ish items happens on Tuesday.

We needed to come up with some sort of sweet dish featuring nuts, so I made this Italian Almond-Citrus cake, okay? It was a dense cake made with cornmeal, though, and it sort of came out tasting like cornbread. Delicious cornbread, but still cornbread. So we tried to moisten it a bit and soak it in some Grand Marnier… and then when we tasted it, it pretty much reminded us of how it would probably taste if you took a shot of Grand Marnier and then kind of puked up a bit of cornbread you’d had for dinner. So no. We’re no longer proposing it, but it looked good, right?:

Yeah, you’d totally hit that if it didn’t taste like crap. Items that DID make the cut through the tastings that we’ll be presenting in the final tasting:

• Pumpkin-Ricotta Cheesecake
• Apple-Pear Purse (we’ve GOT to think of a better name)
• Cranberry Granita intermezzo
• Tartufo
• Chocolate-Amaretti Cake
• Bread Pudding (this is AMAZING)
• Chocolate Tiramisu

It’s a miracle that my jeans still fit. Right now I’m sort of thinking I’m going to have to become a chef because chef’s whites are the only things that are going to flatter me if I weigh 450 pounds when this mess is over.

Well, it’s a chilly Sunday night here in bummer central, USA and I’m tired and relatively uninspired. It’s certainly coming through in my poetry assignment for creative writing class, which so far consists of the following:

I hate poetry and I am thirsty
I wonder if the next Gossip Girl is going
to be as good as the first one and
Oh my goodness I need to get my eyebrows
waxed and get started on my Wines reading,
I wish I could hire someone to clean my room.
Omg, is that me I am smelling?
No, my roommate is cooking something
with onions, thank God.

That’s right. Move over, Donald Hall.

Anyway, speaking of food, the binge eating experience of the century happened tonight in Taverna Banfi. I mentioned last week that my group in Restaurant Management Class has been charged with revamping the Banfi dessert menu (which is to be created and implemented in the next 4 weeks– good one), and, naturally, the first order of business was for the 8 of us to sit down and order three of everything on the dessert menu while the Hotel School picked up the tab.

Holy lord, I was eating chocolate like I’d just been dumped by a whole village of boyfriends. For real, any girl that gets her heart broken, let me tell you honey: march yourself into Taverna Banfi and tell them you’re working on a class project and just order everything on the dessert menu and stuff your little teary-eyed face. Nobody will judge you and the kitchen will probably do an extra-awesome job on all the desserts because they’ll think you’re critiquing the staff.

Not surprisingly, out of the eight group members, I am the least skilled in the kitchen. We haven’t spent much time cooking together yet, but I can tell you right now that the fact that I had to ask “wait, what’s that?” every time a less-than-everyday term was thrown around when we were discussing new dessert ideas… not a good sign.

I was really set on making cupcakes (what? Who doesn’t like cupcakes?), but the group nixed the idea and sort of looked at me like I was the dumbest girl ever. Right now, we’re focusing more on the season (the menu will be in place for the fall semester and until the next group turns it over in mid-Spring), so pear, pumpkin, apple are the flavor front-runners. We threw around some ideas tonight and all I can tell you is that it’s going to turn out to be an amazing menu. Amazing. Promise.

And some pictures from this evening’s Fat Kid Fest, complete with an annotated guide to the current dessert menu items that we porked out on tonight. (Click for larger versions)

The time has come to tackle HA 305: Restaurant Management.

The class involves two lectures per week and a Thursday lab from 2:55-10:00ish in Taverna Banfi. The first three weeks of lab have been a basic training of sorts: TIPS Alcohol Certification, an intro to how things are run at the Taverna in the front and back of the house, and some sampling of the surprisingly extensive TB wine list at the end of the evenings so we can leave the whole 7-8 hour thing with a smile. The next few weeks will be actual practicals (legitimate shifts in the restaurant), half in the front of house and half in the kitchen. Let’s pause for a moment and address this: I’m serving and preparing food for real people? God help them.

So last week was the back-of-house training lab. The TB Chef d’Cuisine, Anthony, set up a little “pretend” restaurant in Statler’s Terrace function space and then straight up started Top Cheffing the crap out of us. He asked us to change into kitchen whites, go up to the Taverna Banfi kitchen, grab a bunch of ingredients and make a menu out of it. Right.

Naturally, half of my classmates began spouting off ideas for, like, curried shrimp over grilled pineapple with jasmine rice, pan seared scallops with a raspberry demi-glace… the words, “oh, it’s my signature dish” were even uttered.

And me? I just sat there. I always wondered how the dudes on Top Chef could throw together a fabulous dish without recipes or catastrophic failures… turns out, not so uncommon. At one point during the intro to this whole mission, Chef Anthony even made eye contact with me and was like, “hey, you look terrified. Are you ok?”

Not surprisingly, I was put in charge of beverages. Some Sprite, grenadine, a little white grapefruit juice and a splash of OJ and I was in business. Around dinnertime, we were notified that some students were ready to eat in our little simulated restaurant, so we got ourselves into gear in the kitchen and made 30-ish portions of whatever dish or course we were in charge of. We practiced taking tickets and putting orders up– we even attempted the screamy kitchen lingo (which I’m actually quite fabulous at, thank you, because it’s essentially a bunch of purposeful yelling).

Normally I’d recount an embarrassing story here, but Chef Anthony was actually pretty cool to me through the whole kitchen training episode and prevented any earthshattering disasters from swallowing the Statler. To be fair, he probably just kept coming over to my station to make sure I wasn’t drowning myself in grenadine, but he was certainly helpful in explaining what was going on around me and ganked me from the bev station for a little while. I got a chance to swing by the grill, appetizer, entree and dessert areas so I could sorta learn the ropes and– dare I even say this– I had an awesome time and somehow managed to light nothing and nobody on fire.

But it’s not over yet. Up next, I have my shifts in Taverna Banfi: an assistant waiter shift, a backwaiter shift, a pantry-prep shift and– get ready– a GRILL STATION SHIFT. No, I know, I’m scared for you people. However, I’m told that the expediters won’t allow a product to leave the kitchen if it’s not up to TB standards, so at least we can all take comfort in knowing I’m not poisoning you.

And perhaps the most exciting part of HA305? The semester-long project that kicked off today. There’s an assortment of different Banfi-related team projects assigned to the class; everything ranging from revenue management to advertising campaigns to implementation of a mystery shopper program. My group project? Get ready…

Completely redesigning and implementing an new Taverna Banfi Dessert Menu with all new items.

I know.

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!

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.

You know what, Hotel School? I should probably be happy that I didn’t spend my afternoon in finance class, staring blankly at a professor who says things like “Band of Investment” and expects me to think about anything besides bands that I’d invest in. I’m also certainly happy I wasn’t outside in Arctic Blast 07, Volume II: Just Enough Snow to Make Your Life Impossible But Not Enough to Cancel Classes Thank You Cornell.

By the way, Ithaca, can you stop? The mayor has actually declared a snow emergency. Ahem, sorry, SNOW EMERGENCY, which basically means nothing except that it’s illegal for me to park my car outside my house until further notice. I mean, I totally understand– should the snowy torture become so unbearable that it warrants a mass evacuation (on foot, obviously) of the greater Tompkins County area, I can see how my gigantic 17 foot-high monster truck (Jetta) parked on the street could pose a serious problem. But still, doesn’t a SNOW EMERGENCY warrant the cancellation of anything?
Apparently not. And it’s a damn good thing, because had class been canceled, I would have missed the glory of this lecture:

…How to plunge a toilet. For the record, this is the only lecture I’ve ever had that was anything like this, but I’m pretty sure everyone in this class (Flush and Gush, aka Toilets, aka Facilities Operation) sat through this particular class thinking, “wow, my life is a joke.” I definitely did, and I think that was evident when I busted out my cell phone and snapped this photo. To be fair, though, I did learn a lot today. Who knew that putting chemicals down the toilet could result in a horrible explosion that could potentially leave your face leathery and gross long before your golden years? See, this is why you plunge.

I know, I know. This is why people make fun of hotelies. Just so you know, our classes are actually pretty tough (this one included– can you teach me all about electrical systems? No, no you can’t).

Don’t worry, engineers. It’s ok that you’re not funny… the Hotel School sometimes writes your jokes for you!

So…tragedy. I was able to get into the Handguns PE course that I wanted, but the only section I could get into conflicts with a required class I have. Bummer! That would have been pretty badass, right? “Yeah, I can’t hang out this afternoon, I have to go to the shooting range. Sorry dude.”

I’m taking bowling with one of my friends instead. I could have taken something that involves actual physical activity… but “running” ranks right up there with “reading/watching Harry Potter” on the List of Things I Refuse to Do. [Ok, I did see one Harry Potter movie, but it was for someone's birthday and my friends did everything but hold a gun to my head to make me sit in the theater. I mean, they probably would have held a gun to my head, but they couldn't BECAUSE THEY PROBABLY COULDN'T GET INTO THE HANDGUNS PE CLASS BECAUSE ALL THE SECTIONS WERE FULL. I digress.]

OH! I’m also doing an independent study this semester. It’s going to be pretty sweet– I don’t have an incredibly focused topic yet, but I’ll be studying under one of the communications professors at the Hotel School. The topic? Ok, get ready: I’ll be researching the rise/impact of blogging in the hospitality industry. Yeah, I know.

I have always complained about the fact that the only publications that circulate in the Hotel School are written by faculty members or by the Career Services Office. Nothing fun, really. After some research, I found out recently that there used to be a hotelie student publication called The Innkeeper. It died in the mid-90’s (leggings survived and the hotelie newspaper didn’t? Why God? Why?) and instead of whining about it until graduation… well, why not restart it? So I’m going to. Stay tuned for updates there. Rest assured: I am DEFINITELY changing the creepy name. Although I am all about being progressive, I was told I can’t put Page Six blind items in there and I guess it makes sense. The stuff would be pretty boring anyway: “which Californian brunette stole two cookies from someone else’s oven during culinary lab and served them on the demo table as her own?” Not even Perez Hilton would get excited about that. And Perez Hilton gets excited about things like the new wrinkles on Jennifer Aniston’s face.

Alright, that’s it. I promise to post a juicy, juicy entry about last week’s sorority recruitment experience soon.