If you have been following my Les Roches Marbella Student Blog, you will have known that I completed my first semester of the BBA in International Hotel Management program and joined the Ritz Carlton’s Abama Golf & Spa Resort, to carry out my first internship. With the start of this New Year I feel as though I owe it to those who care, to share and reflect upon my overall experience of the past six months.
Yes, I did learn a lot about the operational aspect of an actual resort, the management involved, the tools that are utilized, however more than anything, it’s the life experience that really touched me.
I want to be as authentic as possible, hence I am not going to sugarcoat and ribbon wrap my experience and the literature within this blog. It was difficult! As a nineteen year old who had never experienced a REAL job in the past, it was really challenging! But was it worth it? Definitely! I have grown immensely as a person through this experience and I’m extremely grateful for that.
My friends back from high school, who are spread all around the globe, undertaking various different courses, do not get to experience this. Well, maybe in three to five years, but frankly speaking, that’s too late in my opinion. I feel as though this program and the opportunity we have, has allowed me to understand what I really want out of life.
I have always felt a slight flair of entrepreneurial entity within me. Growing up around various cultures has allowed me to develop different perspectives, question societal norms and the system we are all a part of. The educational system happens to be a major part of the system. Having said that, I am a complete believer in education, however I am of the opinion that it has its flaws and it can be the cause for a lot of young people being conditioned into working in jobs they despise for the rest of their lives. There is evidence of that in the General Education Board, which was founded by John D. Rockefeller in the United States several years ago. Mr. Rockefeller publicly announced that “I don’t want a nation of thinkers, I want a nation of workers”.
I want to connect this point to the phenomenal six months I spent working at the Abama Golf & Spa. This experience has given me an excellent insight into what it feels like to work an eight plus hours a day job under external supervision. It has also given me the courage and reason to venture out of my comfort zone and peruse innovative thinking towards building a capitalist empire of my own.
Experiencing something like this so early in my life has been an incredible opportunity. It has really opened up my eyes and led me to focus in terms of what it is that I really want out of life. I believe that placing this internship program this early in our BBA course is of great advantage to all of us. To the point where I deem that every undergraduate course out there should have a similar work experience program within its first year that will provide young minds a true understanding of reality and a kick-start into their perpetual purpose in life.
