From reading this blog, you can tell that the students here at Vita Nova have a lot on their plates, and you saw first-hand as we followed Liz around last week for the day how intense it is to work at the restaurant. Don't get us wrong Vita Nova is a challenge, but with every challenge there is a finish line in sight. The students experience their first triumph this week when the time to switch from kitchen to service and from service to kitchen has come. The Mid-Semester role switch is the first mountain that these Vita Nova students have successfully climbed. Whether they were in the front of the house serving the guests or the back of the house making and preparing the delicious meals, they have spent half a semester mastering their craft. It is at this point that the Vita Nova team decides to give the students a role reversal and have them switch which part of the house they are in. This switch signifies that the students have perfected their current role, and that they are in for a whole new set of challenges for the rest of the semester. The Mid-Semester switch is just another way that the Vita Nova instructors make sure that the students that matriculate from the lab know every inner-working of a fine dining restaurant. By the time that they have mastered one of the aspects of the lab, it is time for them to grow even more and learn another aspect. This will leave them masters of both front and back of the house by the time the semester is over. Students become nostalgic about their past roles, and they become apprehensive about what is to come for them in the roles outside of their comfort zone. The first week of the switch, Vita Nova closes down for an entire day to do extensive training with the students so that they are comfortable in their new roles. When Vita Nova's door open the next day, the students are ready to take on the new challenges the role reversal brings. New waiters and waitresses will greet the guests, and new chefs will be perfecting Vita Nova's delicious menu. After going through Breakfast Lab, Lunch Lab, and two rounds of extensive training, our students are more than ready for the challenge. As you can see, Vita Nova has many moving parts. The students are constantly rotating into new positions, and even new territory. One student will be the head chef one night, and later in the semester be the dining room manager another night. This is what makes Vita Nova so special and so fresh after all this time. The stakes are high, the challenges are new, but our students are the best of the best. All in all, it's just another day of living La Vita Nova.
0 Comments
Leave a Reply. |
The StudentsThe students of the Hospitality Business Management program at the University of Delaware share their experiences at Vita Nova Archives
November 2020
|