A Master’s Degree in Tourism and A Global Pandemic

And the growth they both brought with them.

From May of 2019 to May of 2020 I worked as a Graduate-level Student Assistant for a Student Affairs department at my alma mater, while pursuing a Master’s Degree in Tourism and Sustainable Economic Development. Within that role I was given a level of responsibility and a range of tasks that other institutions would have given to a salary-level professional, a difference I and my fellow counterparts could feel.

It was a decent learning experience, I can’t deny that. But it also showed me what I didn’t want to do with my career — more specifically it showed me what qualities I wanted in my next employer. (There’s the in-depth conversation we could have on how many institutions of higher education have cut costs by cutting salaries and hiring student-staff members at a fraction of the cost and how they throw the label of experience on top of it, knowing that future employers gaze past on-campus employment).

I wanted to be appreciated. I wanted someone to value my work — to acknowledge that I was going above and beyond while also learning: both the curriculum within my graduate course work but also the inner-workings of the department, the job, the institutional-corporate structure. And I wanted to grow. But to grow I would need something: a better employer.

When the time came around for graduation, my university-employment contract also ended, and I had to plan my next move. I accepted a promotion at a boutique downtown hotel, a side-job I had started shortly before I began my master’s degree three years prior.

The world was entering it’s second year of a global pandemic, and I had just gotten two degrees centered around hospitality & tourism — back to back. The travel & tourism economy was barely getting by; convention centers were turned into mock-hospitals, hotels were either quarantine headquarters, beginning to board up the windows, or lucky.

But if we’re being honest, had there not been a pandemic raging just outside then the ladder inside would not have been as quick to climb.

I was 23 years old and the new Director of Operations — a title new to the hotel, as short-staffing had consolidated most line-level and management-level positions. I was now overseeing Housekeeping, Maintenance, the Front Desk, Food & Beverage department, and Valet Services. And right when I found my footing, leaned into my leadership style, and began to connect with my team, they terminated the hotel’s General Manager (a man who had only been hired less than 3 months prior, but that’s another “another story”).

The Vice President of Operations for the hotel’s management company looked at me and the hotel’s Director of Sales — a lovely woman who had already been with the company some ten years or so — and expressed that they were going to find someone, “soon, but not tomorrow” and they were entrusting us to keep the ship running. At this point, one might think… red flag or God help me.

But I wasn’t thinking either.

[to be continued]