Monthly Archives: November 2010

Tutoring kids, writing for my local community radio, teaching the photography club, and visiting an old age home. That’s what my schedule looked like last year. When I was a senior in high school, towards the end of the year I had a lot of time on my hands. Instead of wasting my time, I decided to take advantage of it and serve my community. Teaching kids that want to learn, providing entertainment and news to others, visiting the elderly and putting a smile on their faces. As a Baruch Scholar, we receive free tuition, a laptop, early registration and a lot more. Since we are given great opportunities I feel it is important we give back to our community. This year my group and I decided to volunteer at a non profit organization, the Make A Wish Foundation. This foundation grants one wish to ill children. That becomes very life changing for the children and the people around them. It gives them something to look forward to and hope for. One sick girl wished to be an actress and the Make a Wish foundation had her star on their commercial. At times it may seem impossible to grant every wish, but with their hard work and dedication these volunteers do a great job turning dreams into reality. I am not positive about what my role in this volunteer project will be, but I am hoping it will be a life changing experience and that I will be a great help!

ok.. lots of things to talk about this time. Had lots of different experiences this time around. Learned (barely) how to eat with chopsticks, helped an old woman cross the street (i thought that only happened in movies), went to a handball court, watched two movies while paying for only one and… watched a girl cry at the ending of a movie!! Have also learned to very carefully watch the street even if the pedestrian sign is on; nearly got crushed by a taxi while rushing to school one day.

I remember the first day of classes and it seems only a second ago i was sitting in the freshman orientation and here we are almost four months later; time seems to have flown by. I guess the next three and a half years will go by just as quickly. Classes are going good; things aren’t that difficult.

One thing that i’m learning is that tim management is really important in college and i have to learn how to synchronise my time and make sure that everything gets done in time. This is perhaps going to be my biggest challenge for the next semester; planning rather than just “winging” it.

I believe my role as a Baruch Scholar in the Honors Program is to utilize the most of my efforts and maximize my success. Although this is on a more personal level, I also believe that my abilities as a student can help out Baruch in a number of ways. We are here to serve the community, and I am quite glad that the project that we are doing for Freshman Seminar is involved with community service. This demonstrates that we’re not just in the Honors Program for our brains and intellect, but we’re also part of it to help others. While I don’t believe that the Honors Program is wholly for personal gain, it is definitely an advantage to us in getting to places that we may be striving to reach. However, there is also the community as a whole to account for and our services should always be available to them. After all, the Honors Program has made so many accommodations for us; the least we can do is give something back as a thank-you.

The culture that seems to surround Baruch is that of a closely connected community of students who help each other and others outside the community itself. We become better people by giving back to the community, and I believe this plays a major role in our college lives. Academics is certainly important and we should certainly not neglect that aspect, but that should not be our only objective as students and I am quite sure that the Honors Program emphasizes this. In the end, our role as students should be that of academic excellence as well as a strong dedication to helping out the community.

so why you all up in my grill, yo?

being a baruch scholar, i have finally come to realize that a free tuition is not a free lunch (we pay for lunch every day, anyway.) and that not paying tuition with money doesn’t mean you’re not paying tuition, because they will take something from you in return in the form of your sanity. however, as scholars at baruch, and even as people, we have a responsibility to go out into the community because we have been given that free tuition, our laptops, grand learning privileges, opportunities to form relationships with people who will, in less than a decade, become powerful, highly-paid investment bankers… jokes aside, we also have a need, as humans, to help each other with the benefits we have been given. many people fail to realize it, and i hate that. i wish people knew that people should actually have the idea that hey, maybe this person could use a little bit of help, and it will make his or her life more enjoyable because we are all fundamentally the same and just need some food and someone to talk to. i feel like regardless of benefits or adversity, people should always be doing things for each other, but we’re all just thinking about how disastrous the quakes in “hate-y” were and how they should get somebody to help whoever lives over there, but not them. community service is not $230 you throw at PBS for the haiti effort, it’s about establishing a link with someone at the most basic cognitive level, because we humans are all empirically alike. thus, my point is, we all are indeed responsible for the good of our respective communities, and what we do for the communities we live in will determine the state of those communities, because they only exist, really, if the people who live in them care for them as well as each other and take responsibility for them.

こんいちは、みんあーさま！

Hello, everyone!

Ever since I was young, I always wanted to help people, and give to people. I remember, even as a young elementary school student, refusing to let my friends leave my house until I could find something from my room to give to them to take home as a thank you for coming over. So it really didn’t come as too much of a surprise to my parents when, after just starting middle school, I wanted to start doing volunteer work at the library near my father’s business, which was the library that I frequented most often. For seven years straight—from sixth grade all the way through to twelfth grade—I threw myself into volunteering for this library, and I loved the feeling of knowing that I was both enjoying myself, and giving back to my community at the same time.

I believe that, as Baruch Scholars in the Honors Program, we are extremely privileged. Not only are we receiving a top-notch education, but we’re also being given many different facilities and programs that are aimed at helping us succeed, both in school, and in life (not to mention that our tuition is covered, and we were given free laptops!). With so many benefits being handed to us—paid for out of the state’s and Baruch’s pockets, no less—it’s only fair that we, as students, give back to the community that has given us so much. I feel that, regardless of whether or not the Baruch Honors Program requires its students to perform a certain amount of hours of community service, after being given the tools and the opportunity to create successful futures for ourselves, giving a few hours of our time to help those who are less fortunate than us is the least we can do.

ハブ　ア　ナイス　デイ！　じゃあ　ね！

Have a nice day! Bye!

-Christina

Journal #2 – What does it mean to serve your community?What is your role in the Baruch and broader community as a Baruch Scholar in the Honors Program and what do you think it should be? How is this related to the culture of service the Honors Program promotes?

I have always seen serving community as part of my life. It does not have to be doing volunteering regularly, but as simple as helping an old lady crossing the street. Everyone should help others in our community, especially young adults.  As a young adult and a student, I feel obligated to serve and give back to our community. As the Baruch Scholars Program promotes and emphasizes the importance of community service, my commitment to change our society grew. From give back to our community, it can be beneficial to both the helper and the person who needed help. From contributing, we gain experience and skills; we can develop insights into lives and become more responsible. Personally, I don’t volunteer regularly, but I often helped my neighbors. Since I live in a dominant Chinese neighborhood, my neighbors, due to language barriers, often have bills or letter that they don’t understand or cannot reply in English. I try helping them by translating and replying or calling if necessary. Even though it takes part of my time, I still enjoy it because I have had experience of how hard it is to live in United States without knowing English. It was often rewarding to me not only because they gave me discounts for where they work at, but also because the skills I developed and the satisfaction I fulfilled from helping people. My neighbors, on the other hand, were also thankful for someone to help them assimilate into a new society. I would continue helping others in various ways because I believe little contributions could shape our community into a better place.

To answer what is my role in the Baruch and broader community as a Baruch Scholar, it is to adjust and orientate myself with my new environment so I can have a role later. As a freshman it is inherent that we focus on our duties. As a Baruch Scholar first and foremost that is academics.

What my role should be, or better yet will be(hopefully), is a leader. I applied to become a peer mentor and orientation leader. I like informing people that have to repeat what I did, how I did it, what worked, and how I should have done it. That is why this fits perfectly for me. But that is only my role in the Baruch community.

As for the broader community I do not think Baruch Scholars have any major role except as participants of preexisting initiatives. We are asked to volunteer at nonprofit organizations but I don’t think that is in any way an effective role in any community. There are plenty of high school, college, philanthropist, and bored people volunteering; so what sets a Baruch Scholar apart from them? Currently, absolutely nothing.  What I think our role should be is an initiative generator or effective implementer. Baruch Scholars should form an organization and set up its own initiatives or make itself available to organizations that need a higher caliber of assistants. We shouldn’t go to organizations asking if they want our help, they should come to us asking for help. There should be a purely Baruch Scholars fraternity that picks for itself some meaningful, effective, or useful initiative that is not some sad excuse to say “look I volunteered and helped my community.” I am referring to the required hours the Honors Program imposes on us and the culture of service it promotes. It is not promoting anything more than a faux role in the community. Either we should be organized, and/or have a strong will to do it individually, without a required amount of hours, or what kind of organization we can apply our own initiative. Perhaps helping a non-approved organization can help the community more than spending 15 hours playing a mediocre role in a giant well established non-profit organization that makes itself look self righteous and an important part of the community.