Section BEG2B

Today I attended the freshman reception workshop. It was basically like one big advisement session. I went there with two friends and we spoke with an advisor for about twenty minutes. She was very informative about what classes we have to take and what we should take in the future depending on our major. We also received a packet that had many important requirements we need to know in it. It will serve as a valuable guide in the future.

This workshop was held in a library obviously and they talked about how we can use the online library at the baruch website. It is pretty useful and comes in handy when you are in a tough situation. For example, you can renew a book from the library through the computer only if no one else needs it. If you have a library book thats overdue and you don’t want to pay the late fee, you can use the online library to stop that… (i think thats what the lady said =x)

you can also find all types of books from the website and other stuff

i forgot what else she said… ><

I thought the Freshmen Reception from last Thursday was a complete waste of time.  It was totally unorganized and the fact that they did not expect the turnout that they had made me angry. They should have known that the response would be overwhelming because they sent out so many emails and postcards to the freshmen. So now because of that, they ran out of folders and tomorrow many of us have to take time out of our schedules to go back to that office. Hopefully it’ll be more organized.

[EDIT] After being told that there were no more folders left, the woman then explained to us what we would find in the folders. In it, we would find the types of minors that are offered and the form we must fill out to declare the minor. I went back to the Advisement Center the Tuesday following the Freshman Reception to retrieve the packets that we were to get the previous week.

I selected this particular workshop because it was the only one being offered. It did not take me out of my comfort zone, although it made me very frustrated that it was very unorganized and the crowd was larger than originally anticipated. Therefore, it definitely failed my expectations. I would NOT recommend this to another student unless they like extreme headaches.

I do not feel that I learned anything from this workshop. If I could give suggestions to those who organize this workshop, I would tell them that for the future there should be different dates of this workshop and assign dates to different blocks to attend them. This way, it would be more beneficial to the students and it would hopefully be more organized.

At this workshop I learned about the online library, which the Librarian was VERY proud of.  She showed us various useful tips for researching.

There was a feature that you can look up books from other CUNY campuses and request to bring them to Baruch. Also, I found out that you can hold a book for up to THREE weeks and renew it online. My High School only allowed two weeks. There are also many databases that you can look up.

The best feature I would say is the online book reading tool. Some of the books are electronic reading only and you could read them any time I believe. Of course there are some bad things about that since you can’t read on-the-go unless you print it out.

Although the workshop was very informative and useful, it was also very boring. 🙂

It was definitely crowded. There was a huge line and the people in charge of it werent expecting as many as 2,000 freshmen. So it shocked them and they were unprepared for this throng.

I thought, although we didnt do anything, that it was quite convenient for all the freshmen to be attending it. It was basically all about explaining the contents of the folder. It was understandable because we got to understand what we need to do for out Minors. There was also a sheet containing information on the specific degrees , what degree I should be leaning towards and what we needed to achieve and meet the requirements. I also got a nice idea of the 8 required courses for what the Zicklin School of Business requires. There were other specific documents that helped me understand my goal better . I was looking forward to getting a bit more information, but I got what I needed. I liked it.

Although this is not the same as the library tour, it did help when it comes to the books that I would like to use. It showed us that if we needed any help with a course, we could use the subject guides and also we would be able to chat with librarians in case we needed any help. The ways that we could talk to other librarians is by chat, phone, email, and in person. I also liked that if I ever needed a book and the Baruch library didn’t have it, that I could request it from another CUNY library. The best part of all is that whether I picked it up at the other library or it was sent to Baruch, when handing it in, I could just drop it off at the Baruch library and not have to worry about going back to the other CUNY library.