Stereotyping HRM students

“HRM ka ‘di ba?” and “So, magaling ka magluto?”

These are questions that have been reiterated at me a couple of times over the past few months. So what if I major in Hotel and Restaurant management? It does not mean that just because someone is a student of a certain course, he or she is limited to certain chores.

To be honest, the question that really gets on my nerves more, is the latter.

It is true that the course I am taking covers culinary subjects. But, we do not focus on that in HRM, we also have managerial and accounting subjects—to emphasize the words “hotel and restaurant management.”

Let us not shy away from the fact that the public would always assume that a student of HRM has great culinary skills, associate the course always with cooking. It’s like saying that all animals that fall under the bird family can fly; tell that to an ostrich.

I have been in the Varsitarian for more than a year now; I remember on the summer of 2011, when I sat in front of the selection committee, they were a bit unsure, shocked even, why a student from the College of Tourism and Hospitality Management (CTHM) was applying for a writing position in a publication. Not that I was offended or taken aback, it was just that it was the moment I was introduced to the idea of course stereotyping, or simply stereotyping in general.

And just recently, when I applied for my practicum, I aimed for a position in the human resources department. And what the interviewer told me was, well, I bet you could probably guess it. Plus, he even told me that the position I was applying for was meant to be taken by a Psychology major. Also, when he saw that I was a writer, now an editor, he then asked me, “Oh, writer ka rin pala. Bakit hindi ka na lang nag-Journalism?” Well, in the end, I still got the position.

I have juggled a couple of things throughout my collegiate life which some would consider unorthodox—and I am still planning to. But all personal endeavors aside, what ticks me the most is the way people generalize and scrutinize students by their course. And maybe it’s also time that someone from CTHM defend the mentality that hinders our growth. I come from a college where people usually associate the term bagsakan, along with other colleges such as Commerce and AB. I, and my fellow students from these colleges, do not appreciate hearing that term, along with the mentality that the courses mentioned are easy as cake. It may be true that we don’t need to spend hours in memorizing scientific names, sketching infrastructures or calculating the trajectory point and velocity of a tossed ball. But, what we do is still students’ workload. And in the end, we all get the overripe nfruits of our endeavors—mental and physical exhaustion, and a piece of paper—diploma, well, along with meaningful life lessons never to be forgotten.

Don’t be disheartened when people say, “Ay, ang dali lang ng course mo.” Prove them wrong and better yet, don’t mind their ignorant mumblings at all. They probably aren’t that mature enough to realize that each course has it’s own hardships. The course doesn’t determine the student’s full potential, anyway. There may be a right course for each and every one, but you don’t have to marry the chains which bind the work description for it.

Fellow Thomasian tigers, bottom line is, regardless of our age and whatnot, we are all students—equal in the stone eyes of the Benavides’ statue, in the eyes of St. Thomas Aquinas, and most especially, in the eyes of God.