Section BPR2D

Jack Wu

Freshmen Seminar

Workshop

1. Community Global awareness

I went to watch “Bach and Before II”, performance by Repast Baroque Ensemble, including Amelia Roosevelt, the baroque violin player, John Mark Rozendaal, the viola da gamba player, and Avi Stein, the harpsichord player in Baruch Performing Arts Center on Thursday night, November 12, 2009. The programs include Trio Sonata No.1 in D Major, Sonata No. 5 in E Minor, Sonata in D Major for viola da gamba and harpsichord, BWV 1028, Sonata in B Minor for violin and harpsichord, BWV 1014, and Trio Sonata No. 3 in G Minor, BuxWV 261. The production is very fun and it’s a new experience to me. Even though I like to listen to symphony, but I never actually sit in a theatre and listen the players play. It is a very good way to relax. That night, I put everything down, immerse into the music. Also, I get to know a very nice man, Harry Will, I don’t know if I spell his name right, but his picture stays in my mind. He is really nice gentleman, and also willing to help you.

1. Academic enrichment

This is the first workshop I went in the beginning of the school year. There are hundreds of people waiting for the line to get in. People full with the hole, it is even hard to walk or pass the hole. Staff says that they didn’t think there will be that much people come to the workshop, because usually, only able two hundred people were coming. I was waiting in the line with my friend, and then staff let all the people get in without sign the name. After we get into the room and get the cookie and one drink, finally get a set to sit down, then….the party is over. Yeah, that’s right, we waiting a hour just for a signature. I hope this is not going to happen to our next freshmen.

1. Career Exploration

This is the most helpful workshop I attend of six workshops I went this semester. It is called “Basic Interviewing Techniques Workshop”. Because I have been too many similar workshops on this topic, I thought it will be very boring. However, it was like that. Even though I have been many interview workshops, this workshop still teach me a lot of stuff and it is so detail and professional.  Actually, the workshop already attract me at the first minute, presenter ask us to finish the questions about personal pitch. This is a very important for a person to know and it is hardest for most people to say their strength and weakness, my teacher in high school ask us to do that once. Even though I have experience, when these questions come to me, I still don’t know where to start. Then we gone over some other point I never thought we need to do before, such as company research, and the presenter not only present why we need to do the company research, but also list the point which areas should we pay attention. For example, company history, products/services, competitive profile, direction, net worth, reputation, company size and growth patterns…etc. Time went so quickly in the boring workshop I thought I would have. I learned a lot from this workshop, hope I can have time go their center and learn more things.

1. Arts of Baruch

I went to see Einstein’s Dream in Bernie West Theatre at 7:30p.m. on the  Nov. 19. The play is more fun since I have theatre course this year. Personally, I don’t like watch a drama at all. However, theatre course changes my point of view. I realized how much work and how hard every person in the production group needs to do to make a play shows in front of audiences.  They need to rehearsal many times to make it perfect. Actors need to memorized pages of lines and action during the one hour show. Designers, include set designers, costume designers, light and sound designers also need to put everything together, establish the theme, characteristics, time period, location…etc. The light designers are great. I think he has as much as pressure and responsibility as actors on the stage, because in this show, there is not much setting going on, therefore, lighting needs to create the center image in the stage to audience. And in this play, lighting changes a lot, since the locations of the play are change all the time during the whole show. I really enjoy the show and think them for the hard work.

1. Student Life

I go over my 2mins presentation with my Freshmen Seminar professor. As we know, a lot of people afraid to have speech in front of large amount of people. Even though I had a lot experience speak in front of people and prepare so well for the presentation, but I still nerves. And I think I can do better, but I haven’t think deeper what should I continue work on. In this workshop, Susan helps me to define the place I need to focus on and pay more attention on. I was preparing so well and remember all the lines I am going to say that day, so I choose to have a presentation off paper. However, I am little nerves when I in the front, and start forgetting the lines, so I try to think the lines, and therefore, I lost the eye contact with listeners. She give me some advertizes which will help me in the presentation or speech, such as a paper with some main points I am going to speak, so even though I forget what I want to say, I can find it on the paper, and continue my speech.

1. Personal Enrichment Workshop

This workshop is sets limited. Even though you sign online, but if you come after the sets are full, you can’t get in I finally got in, but many people who are not since not so happy. This workshop also has a very interesting topic. It is surround should we speak out what we think even thought people surround us are different. This workshop unlike others having a presenter speak in the front, it is conversation between presenter and students. We brought some problems we have, some experience we had when we have the situation that our opinions are different than others. And we ended up with a problem about whether we should have workshops or not. And the solution is having people go to the seminar center to explain the issue we have, and if we should have, is there a way to improve the system. It is a nice conversation in the crowded room and presenter is very nice.

I attended a film series workshop to watch My Beautiful Laundrette. They never showed up and they still signed my book. I think it was a waste of my time. And it was very unproffesional for them to not show up to one of these events if they are the ones organizing it.

Very unsatisfied.

ariel

On December 3rd, I attended the Stress Relief Workshop in the multi-purpose room of the Vertical Campus. I went there during club hours. The workshop counted as a global community Awareness workshop because it let us experience the diversity at Baruch. Not only was there a variety of different food, but there were also very diverse students with whom I got to interact with. The goal of the workshop was to relieve one’s stress with a series of board games, massages, video games, food, and human interaction. There was good entertaining music in the background as well as smoothies being served. With finals right around the corner, I have started studying and feel quite stressed out. By attending this workshop, I was able to relieve some of my stress and just hang out with friends. I ended up playing scramble with a few friends. I selected this workshop because it was more like a hang-out area where we could just relax, as opposed to the other workshops. This workshop met all my expectations and more, I went to it fearing that it would not be enough to help me relax, but it was quite the opposite I came out of it with a smile and felt stress-free. I learned many techniques with which to relieve my stress during this workshop and recommend it to everyone since finals are coming up. If I had the chance, I would go to it one more time. It was truly a worth-while experience.

On Thursday, October 22nd, I attented the Oxford Debate: Gay Marriage vs. Traditional Marriage, in the NVC room. This debate caught my eye the first day i saw the advertisement on the bulletin board in the hall. I was so interested in attending it because I know there are a lot of debates over this controversial issue and I wanted to see where people stand. The debate began with a speech by a woman who recently came out to her parents and friends and explained how difficult it is for her to be accepted. After her speech, a history professor, who is for gay marriage, spoke out about his feelings towards it and quoted a passage in the constitution. He explained that if two people love each other than who are we to tell them they cant get married. After his speech, a student began his speech about his views towards keeping everything the way it is. He is for traditional marriage and explained that if we allow gay marriage, then who knows what will come next. He brought up a metaphor about how if a man loved his cat then what’s stopping him from marrying that cat? It sounds silly, but he brought up a point because who’s to say that we wont have a father wanting to marry his daughter if we allowed gay marriage? It wont stop at there because as long as its “love” then they are allowed to marry. A priest spoke after this student and said the same and explained that in the bible, marriage is defined as a bond by a man and a woman. A few more speakers spoke, and at the end of all the speeches, they passed around papers in which you had to vote which one you are for. After everyone voted, the votes were counted and most of the votes went for gay marriage.

This was a really interesting debate because I learned stuff that I had never even thought of before. I got to see both sides of the argument and got a chance to really listen to the way people felt towards this issue. This was definitely one of my favorite workshops.

I went to the Baruch VITA mini-training (Taxes 101) on November 22. The Baruch VITA was something I decided to do in order to enhance my resume so it could benefit me in the future, and gain experience. I have not decided my major yet but still figured it could be a good chance for me to get familiar with taxation. Plus, it was open to anyone. The mini-training was optional, but highly recommended, and the meeting was consisted of a brief introduction to basics of taxation to improve our general understanding. I learned that in order to participate in the 3-day training (which will be held in January), we will have to pass a pre-test. The pre-test was to be given late December, and out of 30 multiple choice questions, we will have to get at least 25 right. However, my real concern was not the pre-test or the January 3-day training: it was the fact that there were so many people joining VITA. Even after we’ve passed the pre-test, not all of us would be guaranteed to continue for the training. There were limited seats, and those who hadn’t submitted their application early enough would be wait-listed: I was one of them. Since VITA was something I decided to join in order to enhance my knowledge in taxation and gain experience, I really hope I could pass the test and that I hadn’t submitted my application too late to be wait-listed, or even worse not able to continue for the January training.

This workshop took place in the beginning of the semester. Basically they spoke to us about, what it is to be an incoming freshman. There was too many students gathered in that room therefore they ended it early and gave out folders with information about the school to look at on our own time. They also gave these delicious chocolate chip cookies and very sweet lemonade.

On November 17^th, 2009, I had my review with Professor Sue Peterson for my oral presentation few weeks beforehand that also counts as the personal enrichment workshop. I was not excited for this review because I do not like to see any video of me, especially when I have to watch it with other people. Moreover, I know that my communication ability is really poor and has to be improved. However, it did not turn out to be that bad: the sound was off, so it relieved me a lot. She mentioned the importance of enough preparation and practice beforehand. She also pointed out that I spoke too fast and my pronunciation was not clear. Therefore, last few weeks I visited the ESL Speech Lab to get some help. However, the computer lab assitant who worked at that time was not clear about it and I ended up not getting any help. Hopefully, next time I could visit it and get some help to fix my pronunciation.

I attended a workshop held by SACC: “Everything you need to know to complete your reading” on October 20,2009. To my surprise, in total only 8 people came to this workshop and it finished 30 minutes earlier. The small number of people coming might be caused by another workshop held by the Writing Center on the same topic and relatively at the same time.

During the workshop, the instructor quickly covered active reading as she assumed most of us have already done it in high school. She also discuss about the note-taking strategies. Instead of reading and paying attention on all the details (which is actually not bad), she also suggested us to always look at the class’ syllabus to be aware of the points which the professor want us to learn. At the last, she gave us the chance to practice the skills by reading an article from the New York Times and finding its main point.

On December 1st, I went to the Sidney Mishkin Gallery on the 22^nd street for the Gallery Tour of Mercedes Matter. It turned out that only twenty people are allowed to go inside at a time so I had to wait around fifteen to twenty minutes. The gallery has two walls in the middle that separate the gallery into three rooms. Each room displays Mercedes’s paintings during a certain period of her life. The first room displays Mercedes’s earlier works. There are some of her realistic paintings when she was around ten years old. In the second room, we have the paintings she created when she was around thirty to fourty years old. The third room displays her paintings during her later life. The paintings in those two rooms are all abstract and hard to be understood. However, I think the instructor did a great job explaining to us about her paintings: the influence of the history and the science during that moment towards artists during that time and the usage of colors and line. This workshop has surely helped me to appreciate modern arts.

This workshop was on the 17th of November, during our usual freshman seminar class. I had waken up late so I was so close to missing this class. When I arrived, the teacher had just logged out on her computer, but she turned it on for me again. It was embarrassing to watch how I had given the speech to the class, and I knew what the teacher was going to say (since the moment I finished giving the speech two weeks ago). I was always afraid of making eye-contact with my classmates whenever I gave a speech, which happened one time when I was in 10th grade. This speech was only my second speech. I learned that I had to practice at least 20 times at home, with a friend or by myself, until I became really comfortable with what I was talking about. Also, I learned that I didn’t necessarily have to make eye-contact with people, and that staring at the walls would do enough, as they wouldn’t know where I’m staring at. This workshop (although I don’t know whether it could be called as one) was the shortest workshop I attended, but a really helpful one. I just hope I’d be able to use what I had learned the next time I ever give a speech in public. 🙂