Daryn Hamilton-Ware English 1101
D346 Project 2
Using your brain to explore a career path
The story behind my hospitality
My name is Daryn-Amel, I’m eight-teen years old, a freshmen at City Tech college, and I’m a Hospitality major. I am a Hospitality major at City Tech college because I am interested in cooking, tourism, and pastry art.
The Hospitality major is a very broad umbrella with many different types of career fields under its name. Although the Hospitality major has culinary arts, pastry arts, tourism, and restaurant management all under it’s umbrella, I am specifically interested in being a professional culinary chef.
The Hospitality major and being a professional chef is the best career path for me because growing up, I moved around a lot from town to town with my family, although I would always be somewhere foreign feeling lost, I always had my mom’s favorite Latin recipes as long as a grocery store was in sight. Cooking always made me feel at home or in a sense of security since it was the only sense of stability I had with my family for a while. My family and I had to move around a lot due to economic reasons up until my mom and dad’s careers were established. According to the ‘ Bureau of labor statistic’s’, people in the Hospitality major start off making a salary in the field of roughly $ 50,000 a year. In my opinion $50,000 is a decent amount of money because there has been times in my life where my dad was only making below $50,000 a year while providing for three kids, still always managing to make ends meet.
Since I was always the ‘ new kid’ on the block in every neighborhood or school I attended growing up due to my families economic standing at the previous time, I learned after attending a new school’s multi-cultural food festival that while most of the other kid’s parents were buying catering platters instead of home-cooked meals for the festival, my mom and I were the only ones in my class whose own personal labor went into cooking a special Enchilada recipe. All my classmates ranted and raved on and on about how delicious my mom’s Enchilada recipe was. Since my cooking ability was very good I learned since that day in elementary school, this is why I want to take courses in my major like ‘ HMGT 49-65 International cuisine’, to learn more about international cuisine’s. As stated in the college’s Hospitality catalog on pages ‘ 49-65’ on the City Tech website under 2014-2015 college catalog, it says ‘ students will learn more about in depth international delicacy and the regional ingredients behind it used to create these recipes’.
Another reason I want to become a professional chef is because I want to be able one day to do some sort of charitable campaign for ‘ Feed the Children’ organization by using my culinary talents in the future after I graduate City Tech with a ‘ Bachelor of Technology in Hospitality Management’ diploma in the next four years.
According to the City Tech college catalog on the City Tech website, the Hospitality catalog says that students taking courses in this field will take a broad range of classes including ‘HMGT 1203, culinary arts one; HMGT 1204 baking and pastry arts one; HMGT 4952 hospitality and tourism enterprise development’. All of these courses are broad ranges of learning aspects needed to acquire a diploma in the ‘ Bachelor of technology in hospitality management’.
Since I want to become a professional culinary chef, I must take all my major’s culinary classes seriously, whole-heartedly, open minded, and attentive to acquire the information I will study because with cooking there must be a lot of note taking, listening, and observation. In hospitality major we will learn a broad range of diverse curriculum, but since I’m a cooking apprentice I will mainly focus on culinary arts rather than the other curriculum dealing with tourism, restaurant management, and lodging management.
‘ The Walt Disney World college program’ is a dream of all hospitality major’s, but will only become ‘ dream come true’ for some selected few hospitality students. Every year the ‘ Walt Disney World college program’ selects a few City Tech students to become culinary apprentices at their Orlando, Florida theme park. I’m hoping while attending City Tech college, that one year I’ll be selected to be a culinary apprentice at their Orlando, Florida based theme park. It would be a ‘ dream come true’, if I ever was selected to become a culinary apprentice at Disney World.
Carlos Cole a student here at City Tech college, is a hospitality major who is also a coordinator for many hospitality events here at the college. Carlos Cole is a hospitality major mentor who also happened to attend the ‘ Walt Disney World college program’ to be a cooking apprentice, hotel lodging assistant, and amusement park ride coordinator. I interviewed Carlos with questions regarding the hospitality major.
I asked Carlos ‘ what made you pursue the hospitality major here at City Tech College ?’, he replied ‘ my parents and grandparents are all alumni’s that graduated from City Tech and have or had good careers because of it, so it was only natural for me to attend, besides its close to my house’. I then asked Carlos ‘ what made you want to major in hospitality’, he then responded ‘ I always loved food and travel, so when I found out they actually had a productive major regarding food and travel my favorite things in life, I felt maybe this would be a good choice for me to consider being apart of’. I personally can agree with Mr. Cole’s answer to question number two. I then asked Carlos ‘ how did you enjoy the Walt Disney World college program, like the experience of it ?’, he then responded ‘ I loved it, every moment, it was an amazing experience that didn’t even feel like work, it was fun, not a burden at all, and I really didn’t want to come back home to Brooklyn after’, he then started laughing. I could only personally imagine that the Disney World college program must have been as amazing as Mr. Cole says it was.
Although I know everything I must get done while attending City Tech college to reach my dream of being a professional chef, I can not pass every course field of curriculum without confidence, communication skills, and having a sense of a whole hearted open mind. Since I want to reach my dream of being a professional chef through City Tech college without giving up when facing obstacles, I must recognize my faults in the skill of good communication. I will be attending a ‘ Effective Speaking ( SPE 1330 )’ course during the spring semester here at the college so I can fix my fault of mumbling while speaking. This course is listed on the City Tech website’s college catalog.
My advice for other City Tech perspective or possible students is that if they are interested in culinary arts, pastry arts, management, and tourism then that Hospitality major is definitely for them. In my opinion City Tech’s hospitality management field is a great sector with good faculty teaching, supervising, and mentoring the people in the major. I would definitely recommend people interested in the Hospitality major’s field to attend City Tech to do so.
Sources
– U.S department of labor statistics
-Hospitality college catolog pages 49-65, www.citytech.com
-Carlos Cole ( student ), event coordinator
-Hospitality college catolog pages 40-48
