Author: j.shlyam

My participation in the Community Service Project has helped me get accustomed to utilizing certain resources available to me. For one, the ability to talk to my Honors Advisor: Douglas Medina, was incredibly helpful as well as my peer mentor: Maria Lorenzo, both of whom answered a number of questions that my group and I had. I also familiarized myself with Idealist, the site we used to find and get in contact with the non-profit organizations we volunteered at. I have utilized the SACC to try and pass Calculus 2610 as well as the honors lounge where, on numerous occasions, I have entered to a room of intelligent students all getting ready for an exam and willing to help one another. I joined Hillel and I had the chance to join IMJ Trading Club but I differed until next year when I’ve assimilated into college life.

I came into this project with a rather limited appreciation for community service and I only looked at it as something required of me in order to graduate and not as something that can help me better myself. However, my views have since changed. I have come to realize that helping my community in turn helps myself as well as helping others around me. Being able to help a child and make a difference in their life is something that feels better than anything. I no longer think about doing it is a chore but rather as a reward for myself since I’m doing something that makes me feel so good.

In the next three years I see myself graduating college early with a good GPA (hopefully with either Magna or Summa Cum Laude distinction) and be financially independent and successful with my future and career path figured out. This is what I hope but being that I am as much of a realist as it gets, I can’t honestly say that this is how it will be. I will do everything in my power to try and have this naive statement of an 18 year old college freshman become a reality but in the long run I just plan to be happy in the years to come and if I manage that that’s good by me.

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?

Serving your community means doing something beneficial to the environment you reside in. When I was younger I never really gave much thought to community service, when I first found out that we had to do community service for school I was confused as to why this was a necessary requirement. However, later on  especially after actually doing community service in my local middle school, I realize that it’s something that both helps your community and helps you as a person.  I think that my role in the Baruch community is to educate myself but in terms of other people to help friends and fellow students in excelling academically and socially as much as I can.  The Baruch honors program offers an exceptional amount of constant support and help for its members and that makes me strive to do the same for people that I know and for my classmates. I hope to be inspired to do even more than I already do to better my community and I believe that The community service requirements of the Baruch scholars program will help me with that goal.

My name is Jennifer Shlyam and I lived my whole life in Brooklyn, NY and I am currently living in Manhattan. When I was 14, I went with my mother to the Manhattan AIDS walk in Central  Park. I never really understood what the disease was and its affect on society until I was about 13 years old, and after that I went, not because my parents dragged me with them, but for the people there. I let the inspiration in their eyes become mine and the same fire that drove everyone walking those five or so miles became a fire for me to help society. HIV/AIDS is an affliction that affects more people than you would even think of, one in every six people you see on the streets of NYC have HIV/AIDS. I didn’t know these people, but this walk made me want to connect to every single one of them.

As an 11 year old one could say I didn’t have many values to strive off, rather I didn’t even know how “values” affected me or if I had any. Whenever I thought “values” I thought my mother telling me how to save money at the local CVS. I thought 3 for .99 and I thought money. I never knew what human values were. Those fives miles taught me that, as corny and cliche as if from my favorite disney movies that teach you a lesson in the end, that the true values really do come from the inside. I was an 11 year old kid running around an AIDS walk asking everyone if they had AIDS, not because I was a curious, inconsiderate little brat, no, I genuinely wanted to get to know them and each of their respective stories.

I came into college for education but moreover for the social experience. I am from a the hottest melting pot in the world. I came from Brooklyn, straight out of the pot, and into the frying pan which is Manhattan. Every face on the train is different, whether it be in color, age or simply countenance. It’s everything I could’ve asked for. As a student in Baruch I want to soak in the diversity and learn as much as I can from everyone’s own unique story. My only concern is not getting enveloped in it too much that it affects my studies.