Baruch Scholars 2010

While initiating the first step of the Community Service project, I realized quickly that the brunt of this schoolwork, coupled with my part-time job week, could easily take the better of me. That’s when I decided that, more than anything, I needed a staff member to encourage me and help me to organize my trains of thought into one steady station. Thus, I began to visit Mr. Medina, not for any strict academic advice, but rather just for help with reacting to the new environment that was Baruch. I also met with Dr. Locke a couple of times to discuss the way i’d been feeling at the time. i’ve thought about heading to the starr career development center, but i haven’t gotten around to it; however, i do feel that it would be an awesome place to get my future plans on track and get everything done that i need to. as far as the student organizations go, i haven’t found anything that i’m really interested in yet… i did play for the baruch winter concert, and that was pretty cool. i feel like the only kind of place i’d feel i’d belong in is either the japanese club, but most of the kids want to learn the language so they can watch and understand anime… not really my cup of tea. i feel that i would belong pretty much anywhere i can perform and play music. when i find something like that, i will jump in feet-first. i feel like experiences with the faculty and performing at the baruch concert really gave me an edge in this school because it taught me, above all, that things at baruch are accessible, and not closed off to anyone. it also helped me to feel a personal connection towards the community service project and giving back to the community that gave me so much. after taking FRO, i feel that community service is really just the way any given individual silently converses with his town, his school, his neighbors, and expresses his appreciation for the ways in which they helped him grow as a living, loving person.

Maria and Mr. Medina have always been there for me when I needed them. They have been extremely helpful when I was having a hard time and gave me the ability to loosen up when I spoke to them.

My participation in the  Community Service Project encouraged me to use the resources that Baruch offered me more often. The databases have been extremely useful to me now that I’ve been assigned a various of projects. I think that these resources will come to be extremely useful in my later years. It has been extremely useful, so useful that I was able to help other people with their projects from other schools.

Although I haven’t joined any student clubs yet, I am looking forward to joining TEAM Baruch and becoming a peer mentor.

I’ve used the study rooms of the library for school projects and the printing center for work.

The community service project have basically showed me once again how important giving back into the community can be. Serving a community is a way to better myself. I think that I will grow as a person with the involvement of others and gain social experience.

Working on this Community Project had made me realize that there are so many resources to use that the only problem is condensing down all the research. While Wikipedia is just about everyone’s favorite (and easiest!) source to use amongst classmates, the various meetings we’ve had in Freshman Seminar have taught me that there are so many options. Mr. Medina, for one, offered plenty of assistance throughout the semester and I am definitely relieved that he will be assisting me for many more semesters to come. He has also encouraged me to be more serious about this Project, as I realized that I have a lot to be grateful for and this this volunteering experience is a great way to say thanks to the community at the large.

The library resources, for one, have definitely been a godsend. The meeting we previously had with Professor Franceous was certainly beneficial as he helped introduce to me the various databases we can use for just about anything, as well as personal assistance. It was a good thing he mentioned idealist.org because that site mainly helped my group discover Doc to Dock, Inc., a very interesting volunteer service that helps pack and ship medicinal supplies to many countries in Africa and Haiti.

While doing this project required some time and effort, we had Maria to help us keep track of the dates. Without her, my group and I would probably be stuck working on the project on Sunday night. However, she has been an awesome peer mentor because she kept tabs on us, and ultimately, we were all able to come up with brilliant presentations.

On the whole, doing this project has helped me realize a lot about myself. Although I can’t say that I became a different person (that would be kinda dramatic!), I have become more grateful of what I have and I also learned that I have a responsibility to give back to the community and keep saying thanks for the rewards I have earned.

I am glad Freshman Seminar didn’t turn out to be a waste of time (as I originally thought), but actually a very enriching class that have impacted all of us in one way or another.

Continuing on from the previous journal entry (#2), besides just stating that community service is something worthwhile to do, it is better to actually participate in some form of service. To find an organization that coincides with my own beliefs was pretty easy due to the help of Professor Francoeur. He provided us with a website – idealist.org – that was very helpful during one of the Freshman Seminar class sessions.

Other than being involved in the Community Service Project, I am a member of the Eco Club here at Baruch. The two projects’ (community service for Freshman Seminar and Eco Club) aims blend together very well. For example, while the community service aims to help other human beings by providing them with excess medical supplies, Eco Club aims to improve and sustain the environment. Both projects complement each other because while the environment can survive without the help from human beings, human beings cannot survive without the help from the environment. So, it is very meaningful for me to give back to the environment and to others who are less fortunate than myself.

Besides these two service groups, I am also a contributing writer for The Ticker and soon hope to become more involved in the inner workings of running an issue.

The Library is perhaps the greatest resource to utilize in any project. This project was difficult in the sense that it required searching for a single organization that the entire group would be passionate in. This forced us to draw upon the resources that we would normally overlook.

I’m also a part of NABA where I recently received a mentor from Deutche Bank, who also recently asked for my resume so I’m actually quite anxious for his approval.

That said, I think I finally understand the significance of this project and community service as a whole.

What does the term profit mean? When men and women are successful in their lives, more often than not we associate this with affluence or more specifically material wealth. But looking closely, where does wealth come from? It is important to understand that profit comes from human labor and in all honesty it comes from the process of undervaluing human labor. We as a society have grown to take certain pleasures, leisures, and liberties for granted. This is because we as a nation are profitable. We grow rich off the labor of others so that we do not need to labor.

Bringing this back to our perspective, we are placed in a unique situation. There is no question that we are included in the privileged group that makes profit. We are in a position of power, not because we have wealth or because we have the most profit, but because we have the ability to give it back. That is the meaning of community service. Our place here in the world is based off the backs of those less fortunate. So it is our duty, it is our responsibility, to alleviate as much of that stress as possible.

I can honestly say that in the past, community service to me was just something I did because I had to. After doing research on this on this community service project, however, my perspective definitely has changed. It is no longer something I do to just get it over with. The organization my group chose is called Solar One. It is an organization concentrated on educating everyone about a greener way of life. At first, it did seem a bit boring and bland to me, but as I read more and more about this organization, the more I was hooked. There is more to them than planting a bunch of trees in the park. They host events that are extremely cultural and they’re even solar-powered! They also have education programs specifically targeted at different age groups in order to get ever aware of what is going on in the environment. In order to find this amazing and fun organization to volunteer for, my group and I utilized the skills we learned during our library freshman seminar class.  When first assigned this project, my group was so confused what to do, we all had different ideas and finally after searching for a couple, we came across this one that everyone agreed upon. During my 3 months in College, I have checked out a couple of clubs, most of them sororities. Going to check them out definitely has also helped me with community service, because for all of the sororities, community service is one of their pillars. Almost every other weekend they go out and volunteer at some event and I had participated in some including the Susan G. Komen Race for the cure. The resources given to me at Baruch helps so much and coming into this school I never thought I would get anything like it.

NEXT STEPS….

After our meeting with the Student Success: Student Life Panels, I’ve come to realization that I need to start getting involved now. My plans were to spend the freshman year adjusting to the college life and then move on to participating. But, I now know that my time is being wasted and I need to prepare for the upcoming experiences.

Until now, the only faculty and staff I’ve encountered were Mr. Medina and Maria. However, after our intimidating meeting, I vigorously searched our Baruch website for clubs and is planning to join one soon. I have not decided which one to join but my interest is leaning towards T.E.A.M Baruch. I noticed I’m too late to join now but I’m going to prepare myself for next semester and keep up with the dates.

Also through our Freshman Seminar meetings, I realized that I wasn’t appreciating the resources that are available for me. I considered the support centers, our own librarian, student clubs, and especially our faculty, staffs and peers to be something that is just there and something that I can utilize if I wanted to but did not need to. But, it’s totally not like that. I need the help that those generous people are offering and it can never hurt me. There is no benefit for them for helping me but there’s a huge benefit for me.

Thus, I decided to not pass on this precious opportunity and one day I’ll be the one offering help because life is about giving back. I probably wouldn’t have come to this realization if it wasn’t for FRO 1000H. Thank you Mr. Medina and Maria and of course, Baruch.

Finding a community service organization was more difficult than a Google search.  We needed to make use of Baruch College’s database and subscriptions to generate batches of community service organizations that met our criterion. Although helpful, the databases generated hundreds of results.  What Google would never have been able to help us with is the evaluation of the types of services: how the experience was, types of people whom the particular service would cater better to, and the impact the service had on the parties involved.  For this information, we turned to our peers and peer mentor, Maria, to gather some insight of the types of services they’ve performed and their reactions to them.  Having been involved in numerous community service groups myself, I had a general understanding of almost every type of community service we found on the databases and was able to critique the service to help the group decide on which one to join.

This experience, overall, has been an enlightening and productive one.  Hearing others talk about their views towards particular services showed me how much community services have affected and influenced them.  Although I have yet to join a club full time, hearing them speak about community service makes me want to start being involved in it once again.  Now, however, I can make use of the databases in finding and joining one of my choice as opposed to one that a particular club/organization may want to be involved in.  By using databases, I became better associated with how they work as well as which ones to use.  The many resources in the library amaze me.  I hope that by doing more things like seeking out community service centers and looking for information, I can gain more in the years to come.

All the speakers we had on Monday spoke a lot about passion – being passionate about certain subjects, about their future careers, about helping people. That they wanted to and loved doing all that they did is what allowed them to be so successful at handling their huge responsibilities. I have debated joining clubs and have went to a few meetings for several. Though they are great and useful clubs, it took me a while to find one that truly sparked my interest – my own thing to be passionate about. As I stood by the escalators on the second floor of VC during club hours a week ago, two girls came up to me and joked that the lollipop (a free lollipop offered along with a “kiss me I don’t smoke” paper) was almost done and I could use a Hershey’s kiss. I agreed and they gave me a red paper heart that said create love now on top, and told me to write something, anything positive. Not to be corny, but I immediately fell in love with the idea. Sure, there are a tons of empowering, kind and positive quotes that we find in books or on the internet and even in our planners. Despite all of that, there are people who are constantly unhappy or angry or dissatisfied with their lives and maybe seeing that red paper heart posted there, or writing something good for someone else, would change that. People are unhappy with the person they are and often complain about it, wishing they had someone else’s wealth or looks or grades or job. No one’s life is perfect but thinking about the good things and realizing that they are indeed good can work wonders for your mood and your happiness.

My participation in Community Service Project has shown me that a lot of the faculty that I wouldn’t necessarily thought would be a help, were. The librarians were a huge help in showing us websites that are useful for finding organizations – showing us Idealist and how huge the Baruch database is. Maria’s way of setting deadlines for us was very helpful and the tips from last week’s speakers about really using the planner and writing things down in two places was great. Ultimately, everyone can make a difference because even if one person doesn’t directly influence a whole group (though writers and speakers do that often,) they can influence just one more person, who will influence another and another.

My dad told me something that I find very true: “Those who are unsuccessful do not know what they do not know.” Seeking assistance and realizing what one doesn’t know are keys to success. When we visited the library and I found out that there were actually websites to find non-profit organizations, I realized that I didn’t know a lot about researching.

I went home that day and explored the databases and online resources that the Newman Library offers. I was so interested by the varieties of research databases. I used them to look up information for my classes and I found that these databases are much more efficient than good ol’ Google.

Another thing I learned about from Stephen Francoeur was www.idealist.org. Idealist helped me and my group find a community organization that we were interested and one that was close to us. When we decided that we wanted to volunteer at an animal shelter, Idealist helped us locate an animal shelter that wasn’t very far from Baruch and provided shelter for cats and dogs.

The first few weeks of school, I was content with spending my two hour breaks with my friends but I wasn’t doing anything productive. I was exploring the area around the Baruch and scoping out vegetarian-friendly places to eat but it wasn’t really fulfilling. So I went to the Club Fair and signed up for a few clubs and attended meetings. I learned from a friend that there was a club called the South Asian Student Association at Baruch. Curiosity led me to find out when and where meetings were taking place and I attended a meeting. It wasn’t just the Indian food that was appealing; it was great to reconnect with my South Asian roots. So, I decided to join the club and I’ve been attending meetings to learn more about my culture. It’s been a great experience thus far and it has made me realize that there are so many ways to give back to the community.