...And Then There Were 11

Okay, for those of you tired of my blogging about bad drivers and sensitive dogs, now that school has restarted, I promise I'll get back on track with the general focus of this blog, though I reserve the right to go off on a tangent and/or rant at any time.

I just finished day one of "reorientation," during which a lot of people talked to us for 15 minutes at a time about all that's changed while we were away (new dining hours! new parking lot rules! whoo hoo!) as well as to please remember to hand in our extern manuals on time and what to expect in the next six weeks as well as to please remember to hand in our extern manuals on time and oh, did I mention, hand in our extern manuals on time? The manuals aren't due till Thursday, but I had mine done and handed it in today in hopes of avoiding more anxious pleas to remember to hand it in on time.

My real classes don't start till Wednesday. Believe it or not, I have another day to get "reorientated," one of my favorite goofy words ever. Tomorrow is actually a useful day as we'll go from the Bursar (to ensure our bill is paid) to the Registrar (to confirm our class schedule) to, my favorite destination, Central Issue, where Brunhilde the Bitchy Uniform Queen will no doubt make some comment, like every time I've seen her, about how I could lose weight if I just did a couple laps around the parking lot during lunch.

Oh yeah, that's something to look forward to. Note to self: try not to hit her in the head with a hammer.

We'll get measured for new uniforms, including the snazzy (not) denim chef jackets we have to wear for the final three weeks before graduation, when we will be unleashed on the public as front of house staff for the school's bakery and cafe. We'll also pick up books, get new campus mailboxes and that sort of thing.

When my classes finally start, I'll be in the classroom, rather than the bakeshop, until mid-June. I'll be taking five classes: Nutrition, Costing Control, Restaurant Law, Menu Development and Introduction to Management. I'm looking forward to the first two (yay math!) as well as Menu Development. I think Restaurant Law could be interesting or deadly boring. The one class I'm dreading is Intro to Management, because if it's all role-playing and touchy-feely, I'm going to do poorly. I can imagine it now:

Q. An employee appears drunk on the job. What do you do?

Me: Fire him/her.

Q. An employee is late several days in a row and often bursts into tears on the job. What do you say to him/her?

Me: "You're fired."

Q. An employee comes to you and complains that another employee has made an ethnic/racial/religious/sexist/ageist/heightest/sizeist/political slur. What do you do?

Me: Call them into my office (the walk-in) and fire them both, unless I like one of them better.

Oh yeah, this is going to be a good class.

The biggest news of today was how few people returned. When we started, there were more than 100 of us crammed into the main amphitheater-style classroom. Today, we easily fit in a conference room in the Student Rec Center, with many empty chairs. (We were culinary and baking & pastry students mixed together).

Of the 21 people in my class when we left on externship in December, only 11 of us are back. At least four were held back from externship to repeat classes (ha!) and, in a touching story, one girl hated her externship and quit, then moved in with her boyfriend (also in our class) and started working where he was on extern and he elected to stay with her until she finished. Aww, how touching. Whatever. At least one girl definitely quit and went into front of house management, a blessing for us all since she actually set her pastry cream on fire... more than once. The rest are simply MIA.

Fortunately, and not surprisingly, almost all of the people who did come back are the people I liked the most, or at least minded the least, and are generally the most serious about this. Whew. We may get some more people in our class (sometimes people work longer at externship so a few people who were ahead of us may drop back to join our group), but we've all got our fingers crossed that our class stays nice and small at just 11 people (class sizes are supposed to be 16-18 max, so when we had 21, it was a headache for the chefs as well as for us).

Before leaving campus, I stopped by the Hospitality Office to check in with my tour guide boss. Wow, what a reception! Hugs and kisses and effusive praise all around. Apparently none of the current tour guides are quite as loud and bossy as I am and they're glad to have me back. Gotta keep those old ladies on the tours in line, ya know?

Which reminds me of something I meant to note ages ago. At orientation at the Vegas hotel, I was elected group leader, almost unanimously -- only I didn't vote for myself because, quite frankly, I didn't want the position. When I muttered to the woman next to me "Why me?" she replied "You have the face of someone in charge."

Oh. So. I guess that's a compliment? Or perhaps an admission of fear.

I guess having Chinghis Khan as a personal role model all those years finally paid off.