Month: October 2016

Switching majors

“I had so many problems last semester,” said Katherine Ward, an FIT transfer student, “due to holds from different departments.”

“My associate’s is in fashion design,” continued Ward. “I had to change my fashion major because it required too much homework. I became anemic.”

“I really wanted to go for creative writing,” said Ward, whose new major at Baruch College is journalism. “But my mother suggested to have a degree in something that has an actual job, like journalism.”

“Its equal parts boring and stressful,” Katherine said of her part-time job at Topshop on 5th Avenue. “I don’t think there’s a retail job out that that isn’t headache inducing.”

She works in the shoe department where “its more of a one-on-one kind of thing. You get to have conversations with people.”

“You always get those customers that ask you to tie their shoe for them, or zip up the boot for them,” she said wryly. “Its always a response that’s between ‘oh okay’, and ‘I’m not your slave person…'”

She yelled, “I know what I want to write about!”

“Online gaming is basically a really fast and growing industry,” said Anita Zheng. “There are so many competitions.”

Males gamers asked, “Why are you playing this game if you’re a girl?”

Zheng says, “There are a lot of stereotypes. It’s really a male dominated industries while a lot of my girlfriends play games a lot.”

“Girls have ideas about different designs for video games,” Zheng said.

 

 

Cole Greene said,”I work at the Flatiron Room. It’s a whiskey bar and I am a hostess.”

“I was supposed to go to a party with my boyfriend but we didn’t end up going,”said Greene.

“It was a house party off of prince street.”

“I didn’t dress up.”

“We ended up going to Union Square and hung out. We got home at 5 am and slept until 3 pm then next day.”

“You know, I did not want to be a journalist when I was growing up,” Rebecca Simon said. “I originally went to college with the intent of graduating with a psychology degree. But then I thought, why not? And here I am.”

“At this point, I’m pretty sure Baruch will use the slow WiFi as an excuse to raise tuition. Why else would it be so slow?” Simon added.

Simon went on to say that, “As much as I complain, Baruch is a pretty good school. I couldn’t find a better journalism department for this price in the East Coast.”

“I don’t really. I use fantasy football as a distraction from my real work,” said Kaye.

Kaye said, “I check it every morning, and it delays my morning routine by about 15 minutes.”

“Not doing very well,” admitted Kaye. “I won my fantasy baseball – 2nd year a in row – but I’m struggling with fantasy football and I don’t know what I’m doing wrong.”

“I’m trying to defend my championship – I won last year – but it’s not looking too good,” said Kaye, a 23-year-old senior at Baruch. “I don’t even think I’ll make the playoffs.”

 

“No, I don’t think that New York City has taken the proper precautions to prepare for another hurricane or superstorm which would measure up to the magnitude of Sandy. Quite honestly, I’m apprehensive about the future of this great metropolis when it comes to standing up against the untimely force of Mother Nature,” Markowicz stated.

She then said, “Shame on Mayor Bill de Blasio for his lackluster campaign to prepare our city for another disaster like Sandy. Shame on him.”

“Yay, you spelled my name right!” she added.

“I worked on Friday and Saturday.”

“I work at the Rose bar. I’m a waitress, a cocktail server.”

“It was long and exhausting, I wasn’t supposed to work on Saturday but I got called in because someone was late.”

“We had Halloween parties.”

“Got home from work at 6 a.m.”

“I didn’t really get to go out or anything.”

“I slept for two hours.”

“And had a million things to do the next day.”

 

Copy Editing 101

Making sure your word choice is specific:

Confusing: Andy annoyed Juan, but that didn’t stop him from asking for a meeting.
Clear: Bob annoyed Larry, but that didn’t stop Juan from asking for a meeting.

Frequently Disparaged: Everyone withdrew their money.
Uncontroversial: Everyone withdrew his or her money.
Uncontroversial: People withdrew their money.

Missing or Unnecessary Capitalization

Capitalize proper nouns: The names of things, such as the Golden Gate Bridge.
Lowercase common nouns: Descriptions, such as that famous bridge.

Shift in Verb Tense

Wrong: John Wilkes Booth barricaded the door while Lincoln is watching the play.
Right: John Wilkes Booth barricaded the door while Lincoln watched the play.

Sentence Fragments

These aren’t always wrong, and can sometimes be used to great effect. But don’t use them accidentally.

Fragments: Because she was late. And I held the door.

Errors in Parallel Structure

Not Parallel: Kids like singing, chatting, and check their phones.
Parallel: Kids like singing, chatting, and checking their phones.

Passive Voice

Passive voice isn’t technically wrong, but active sentences are often better.

Passive: The bell was rung by zombies.
Active: Zombies rang the bell.

Commas in Compound Sentences

Wrong: All my friends came over for my birthday Tuesday and Bobby visited me the next day.
Right: All my friends came over for my birthday Tuesday, and Bobby visited me the next day.

Quotations – THIS IS A BIG ONE

In the U.S., periods and commas go inside the closing quotation mark. Semicolons, colons, and dashes go outside the closing quotation mark. The position of question marks and exclamation points varies: They stay with their question or exclamation.

Use period (inside quotation mark) if the sentence ends at the end of the quote with no attribution to follow. If attribution follows, the period becomes a comma. Exclamation points and question marks stay the same whether or not an attribution follows.

Some occasional exceptions to the punctuation inside quotes rule” as seen below:

Correct: She yelled, “Help!”

I won a copy of “The Hunger Games”!

She asked, “Are you hungry?”

Did he just ask, “Are we in Hungary?”

Attribution near the beginning or in the middle of a very long quote.

“I’ve been working three jobs for the past eight years. It’s been hard, but it’s worth it to be able to provide for my kids better than my parents provided for me. I remember going without breakfast most days when I was little. That was really hard. I’m so thankful that’s never happened to my kids,” she said.

Removing unnecessary words.

Keep things concise. “He barely knew the guy. He was an acquaintance at best. He’d never really spoken with the man.”

Using the same word multiple times in the same sentence or in nearby sentences.

His brows furrowed in anger. “I can’t believe she said that,” he said angrily.

On the morning of October 12, hundreds of women, most of them young, were getting ready to walk up Fifth Avenue to Trump Tower in Manhattan to protest, in response to the Donald Trump tape, obtained by the Washington Post the previous week, in which he bragged of groping and kissing women without their consent.

Yong Jung Cho, 26, led the protest. Cho is a campaign coordinator for 350.org, a global climate movement. She is also the organizer for #AllofUs 2016, a group of millennials who believe in an America where everyone’s voice is represented. Cho walked up Fifth avenue with other women activist, with a signage of #trumpvsallofus #gophandsoffme.

“Trump refuses to take responsibility for his nasty words. The GOP refuses to take responsibility for making Trump be their nominee,” said Cho outloud.

Cho has been organizing protests in major cites throughout the United States. Chicago, Washington DC, Los Angles and Ohio. Just recently she went got arrested in Washington D.C for protesting in front of the office Speaker of the House of Representatives Paul Ryan. She was released a couple of hours later with a summons.

Cho grew up Ridgefield, New Jersey. Her parents are from South Korea. Growing up, her parents did not have social services like healthcare. Cho thought she was going to become a doctor to take care of her family and her community, but that changed when she got to Bryn Mawr College.

In Mawr, she got into her school government, where she learned how to get her voice heard.

“We need to organize and build power so that we can be shifting the system,” Cho said.

She also became interested in climate issues in the world.

“Most people in the United States know that climate change is happening and want leaders to take action not because it is a threat for the future, but because it is happening right now, it has impacted people today.” Said Cho

Donald Trump does not believe in climate change. Hillary Clinton wants to cut down on energy, but she is a big supporter of fracking, in which Cho is fighting against. The climate change topic has not been covered during the three debates. According to a poll conducted by Pew Research Center, it shows half of Clinton’s supporters care about climate change, compared with 15% of Trump supporters.

When asked about who she voting for in November 8th right away she said, “Not Trump!” “His outrages campaign of hatred that’s directed against not only women, but people of color, against immigrants, it’s just too much to sit around, we have to rise up and say no,” said Cho Even though she don’t like trump, she also have issues with Clinton “Clinton does not have a connection with the younger generation,” said cho

According to the Washongton Post, more than two million young people cast ballots for Bernie Sanders in the 21 states during his democractic campagin more than Clinton and Donald Trump combined. Sanders won about 29 percent more votes among those under the age of 30.

Cho was a major supporter of Bernie Sanders. She recalled the moment she went to the Bernie Sander rally in Washington Square Park. “Just to see most of our generation go and support a canadiate, who heard our voices about the issues of education, the class system and climate change it was special for me for what I stand for.” said Cho

With Sanders being defeated by Clinton. Cho looking at the at the positive. “I have no illusions that Clinton will be the resolution to our generation or our country problems, but we can’t let trump to become presdient, who is not fit to slove those isssues,” said Cho, but added I am supporting for Hillary Clinton because we must defeat Trump, but I am going to keep fighting for an America for all of us.

According to a recent poll by the Wall Street, Clinton is backed by 49% of likely voters aged 18 to 29, compared with 21% for Trump, and 14% for Libertarian Gary Johnson.

Cho is happy she gets to have the freedom to speak her mind without. “The out come of elections impact real lives, and so therefore we have reasonability to engage in our political process that is how democracy works,” said Cho