Monthly Archives: November 2010

Even though I’m a Baruch Scholars, I’m still in the process of going from just doing schoolwork to doing other activities in the school as well. For freshman year, I plan on working hard on schoolwork only to assure that I do well, hopefully.

My role as a Baruch Scholars is probably to use everything that Baruch has to offer me and use these to my advantage. After absorbing what Baruch gives, then I would use everything I received and return some back to the community. For example, I’m being offered a free education, which means that I would have more money and more time. With the extra time I have, I can use that to do community service to help out the community. That is only but one example of how to help out the community. I’m starting to do that, but as I said before, I think my grade is my priority.

The culture of Baruch, for me, has a very friendly atmosphere. We are doing community service to aid the community, but sometimes I feel like this can be a burden as well because it is one more thing that we have to do. It means good, but sometimes I just feel like being an honor student has more to do. Which is different from being challenged.

The last thing that I want to mention is that whether I’m a Baruch Scholars or not, I came to college to make new friends in the process of learning. People who will not only be helpful to me in the future, but people who would actually be my friends twenty years in the future. That will be my main goal as a Baruch student.

What does it mean to serve your community?

I believe that my role as a Baruch Scholar in the Honors Program or the broader community is to learn and give back.

Here, learning does not simply just mean the academic aspect. It applies to all kinds of experiences: social, moral, physical, mental, all kinds. I believe everything happens for a reason.

When I was young I went through a lot, things that were difficult for an 11 years old to handle. Divorce of my parents, separation from my mom, adjusting to new family plus a whole new country, death of my father, another separation to reuniting with my mom, these incidents struck me hard back then. But, I survived. I overcame my difficulties and accepted the fact that these experiences were the ones that made me strong. Then I realized that going through all this in the earlier stage of my life was a huge benefit. Now, I can relate to people that are going through these similar experiences and offer them help or at least comfort. Like Professor Teufel has mentioned, pain is private and no one could actually “feel” the pain one is going through, but we can always use our experiences to try to feel their pain and I absolutely agree. If I had not learned the grief, anger, and sorrow, through my experiences, I would not be able to reach out to those in need, which I consider giving back to the community.

As a Baruch Scholar, I want to learn and experience everything that the program is offering. I am not attending classes and memorizing thousands of concepts just to have a stable future. I am doing all this so that one day I can use these knowledge to reach out to students who needs my help. I want to be a well-rounded teacher who can lend a hand in all kinds of aspect when they need help. But for now, I’m the one reaching out and lending a hand is exactly what the Honor Program is offering. The program is giving all Honor students a chance to experience the world and is supporting them until they can stand on their own. Then, those who received help will give back to the community by serving and offering help to those now in need and the cycle continues.

When I was admitted into CUNY Baruch as a Baruch Scholar, I felt really proud and that I was one of the more luckier people in the world. I was lucky enough to be given these opportunities Baruch offers me as a Honors Scholar, which includes free tuition, assisted study abroad grants, small classes, priority registration, and many more! However, this does not mean I should not do anything or give back to the community. Because I was offered these opportunities, I was considered to be more fortunate than others. I really believe in trying to help others too because of that fact and I would try to engage in community service outside and inside of Baruch.

Currently, I’m not in any clubs, organizations, or business fraternities. However, I do intend on joining VITA (Volunteer Income Tax Assistance) for next year’s tax season. I have no prior experience with filing tax forms, but I am highly motivated to learn because I believe that this is not only a great opportunity to learn in Baruch, but also a very meaningful activity. VITA will give me a chance to file tax reforms for those who can’t afford to go to accountants and other firms. This gives me a sense of actually helping out and contributing to our society.

Besides joining clubs or business fraternities during my time at Baruch, I am also required to volunteer for a nonprofit organization as a Honors Scholar. This actually encourages me to take action and offer help to others instead of just me telling myself I need to volunteer (because I know I would probably forget because of my bad time management skills). I’m really glad and fortunate to take a part of giving back to our community as a Scholar from the Honors Program.

As a student in the Honors Program at Baruch, I am given a privilege that many other students are not. By granting me this scholarship, Baruch is providing me with a top-notch education while also saving my family the hassle of paying for college. I have two older brothers who both attended NYU, so I know what it’s like to have to take out loans for college, and it was a great relief knowing I would not have to do this. Therefore, it is my duty as a Baruch Scholar to be an active participant in my education; I cannot be a passive student for the next four years. My role right now is to explore, to discover what classes I want to take and what interests me. I also think it is our role be responsible for our own education and our lives. Now that we’re in college we cannot be told what to do and nothing will be handed to us. We must use the knowledge we’ve been given throughout our years of schooling to make decisions for ourselves. The Honors Program is also shaping us to be leaders by doing service projects in our communities. Doing this service takes great responsibility and dedication, and it also helps us to become leaders. Through challenging courses and plenty of opportunities this program is guiding us to achieve these qualities. Furthermore, it is up to us to take advantage of these opportunities given to us, otherwise we will not be able to grow as students and as people.

In high school, I was told that “in order to get into a good college,” I would have to do community service. Kids around me began volunteering at soup kitchens and nursing homes, and I figured that if they could do it, so could I. So I did.

I started my volunteer work at a “rehabilitation facility”—not the rehab stars go to, but the rehab your grandmother would visit when she got out of hip surgery. Except, this was not only a rehabilitation center. It was a “home”. Technically, it was a “residential facility,” but calling it “rehab” gave the people inside some semblance of hope—they were only there to get better and go home, right? There was also one floor reserved for “psych patients,” but most of them could care less what the place was called; one lady with schizophrenia was earnestly convinced that the entire building was her castle.

You marked your visit by signing in at a desk right past the two layers of automatic double doors, which would glitch and beep at you every now and then. The doorways were lined with sensors, which corresponded to electronic bracelets forcibly worn by some of the residents. They wanted out, but the second they passed through the front doors, the alarm would sound. A nurse told me it was “for their own good”.

At the Thanksgiving luncheon I volunteered at, only one resident’s family showed up. Despite the overwhelming sense of obligation, it seemed like a nice gesture. However, the other fifty residents in the room just stared at the floor, either too sad to even be jealous, or totally asleep. Although I was completely removed from the situation, it was pretty depressing to witness.

When we started talking about doing community service in Freshman Seminar, I wasn’t sure where I wanted to volunteer, but I knew exactly where I didn’t. Some people have tried to convince me that by volunteering at a nursing home, you bring joy into these peoples’ lives, but I find that hard to wrap my mind around. The fact that the residents have essentially been abandoned and left to die is a humongous elephant in the room, and it’s something I can’t see past.

So, that is why I am going to clean up some parks.

Serving your community can mean anything from picking up trash on your way home from school to helping tutor kids attending underserved and underfunded schools. It means being able to affect the lives of the people living in your community in some way, no matter how small the deed is. I see my role in Baruch as a zig zagging forest of thorns that I have to somehow jockey my way through ultimately leading to a fire axe. That fire axe is a symbol of a position of influence within Baruch. A position that can cleave its way through the problems of the community and the school. Quite an analogy eh? With great power, comes great responsibility. – Ben Parker. As a newly minted Baruch Scholar, I have been endowed with the tools and privileges that allow me to best service the community as I think best.
I think that the culture of service breeds a sense of being a greater whole and allows us to conceptualize and adapt to greater serve our communities as a whole. It makes us feel like a part of a bigger network and how we by performing some seemingly meaningless service might improve the world around us little by little.

“The program is committed to developing well-rounded individuals, engaged citizens, effective leaders, and graduates who are prepared for successful careers in all fields.”

­– Baruch Honors Blog

Well-Rounded: A well-rounded individual possesses qualities that make him aim at excellence in whatever he does. It is the goal of the honors program to promote this inner ambition, and to push individuals to excel in academics, in communications and soft skills, in sports, in music and the arts, in community services, in leadership, and essentially, in life. As a member of this program, it is crucial that I follow this path as well. Following this does not mean to be dormant about the skills I develop, but to utilize these skills for the betterment of society.

Engaged Citizens: How much of I, can I put out there? An engaged citizen is one who takes part in “active citizenship” – working towards improving the community for the better. By dedicating at least eight hours to community service, honors students are required to be engaged in either Baruch or the broader community. I should not only play a part in this act, but to emphasize the attitude behind serving the community. It is one thing to do eight hours of work. It is another to raise awareness and influence others to do the same (even more maybe). My role is to be the influence.

Effective Leaders: The honors program will develop students into leaders that will lead Baruch, and the community. These students will hold strong positions in their fields, be effective communicators, and basically, lead. To lead is to do it first. As a developing leader, my role is to promote Baruch’s culture of service by putting more effort and time into my service. Only then, can I influence others to do the same. Only then, will my words hold water. Only then, can I lead.

My role is simple: to use my skills to serve the community, and to be one of those graduates prepared for success.

The role of a Baruch Scholar is to represent the Baruch Honors Program well. A scholar has already been recognized for his or her academic excellence; it is what the student does past academics that make the student a scholar. A scholar should play an active role in the Baruch community and the broader community.  A Baruch Scholar in this sense would be a suitable role model for peers and colleagues.

My role at Baruch at the moment is that of a student. I am trying to obtain a firm grasp on the changes and adjustments of college. I intend to branch out into the Baruch community first. I intend to join an honor society within Baruch and become an active member of the club and their events. Branching out to clubs that are both interesting and beneficial to my academics still require a bit of searching at the moment. My involvement in the community itself is a work in progress that is taking place during freshman seminar. As of now, I do not consider myself a full Baruch Scholar. I am a scholar in the making; freshman year prepares the student to be able to and want to reach out to the community.

The Honors Program promotes a sense of “giving back to the community.” The initial feeling should be inherent but freshman seminar helps build upon it. The opportunities are present and provided by the school. The Baruch community and the Honors Program provide everything necessary to build a foundation from which scholars should build upon to become outstanding members of the community. I think that the Honors Programs goal would be to provide the basis and environment for scholars to want to give back to the community and make that feeling their own.

It is not enough to think of yourself as the center of importance. There is an entire world of interactions — causes and effects — that don’t affect you directly. This doesn’t make them less important, from an objective perspective. It is very difficult, but often crucial, to let go of the ego and adopt a broader outlook.

To serve your community is to do just that. It is to think past what you stand to gain from a certain action, and do it anyway, because it helps someone else. This could be volunteering for a soup kitchen, a children’s hospital, a park service, etc. These are ways to express your understanding of your position and role in serving a greater cause.

My role in the Baruch Honors program may be that of a student. However, the Honors program wants students to realize for themselves the idea of thinking past their personal gains. The service project is a clear-cut example of this type of culture. It is not enough to simply go to class and go home. I appreciate the investment the program has placed in me, and I want to help out in the ways that I can. I want to help others in the way the program is trying to help me. This is my real role.

I am already taking on this role. I joined the Student Services Committee of Undergraduate Student Government. This committee wants to make life better for students at Baruch. It wants to understand their concerns, and does so in different ways, such as sending out surveys that ask about students’ experiences with various services at Baruch. The Student Services Committee works with clubs like the Transfer Student Organization to try to incorporate the students into the Baruch life that extends past the classroom. The goal is to let them know what is available for them.

I plan on joining other committees to continue contributing to the community culture the Honors program is trying to create.