Section BUW1A

I attended this Community-Global awareness workshop as recommended by my history teacher, Professor Fernandez on October 14th. The workshop dealt with the different backgrounds and races in the United States. The main purpose of the workshop was to inform us about these other races, and it taught us to appreciate the different cultures.

I found this workshop to be very interesting because there were many speakers, and each speaker had something different to say about their background and how it came into play with the society. The workshop had a big emphasis on African Americans and how they are not treated the same as everyone else in today’s society. The speaker used statistics to emphasis on this point. African Americans have lower income and a higher unemployment rate in comparison to other races. I feel that this is true.

The freshman reception was very very crowded. Almost the entire community of freshmen were there. There was so much people that everyone was asked to just get their papers signed and leave. I didn’t learn anything, but i was able to get papers and guidelines to graduation in Baruch college. I hope the next one isn’t as crowded. Luckily i was one of the first ones to get it signed and i thought it was still a Baruch experience for me as a freshman.

I attended this Community-Global awareness workshop on 10/14. We had deep debates about race in our society and how it affects us. Some people brought up a good point on how, despite all the racism and stereotypes, race is what distinguishes one person from another. Others said that man is all equal and race doesn’t matter. It was a great workshop and talking about this big controversial issue of today really engaged me into the discussion. It was a little long, but I am glad i went to this workshop because racism is something everyone encounters everyday and this workshop brought one more step to fixing it.

Even though I am not required to attend enrichment workshops, I like to take advantage of many of the great opportunities here at Baruch. I thought I would share with you my thoughts on two that I sought out this semester.

The first was the Landscapes exhibit at the Mishkin Gallery. After reading so many of your great blog postings about your experiences, I decided to check out the exhibit over my lunch break. Unfortunately, I did not benefit from having an official tour like many of you did, but, even so, I enjoyed seeing the different perspectives on landscapes. I was particularly impressed by the bleakness encountered in some and the vibrant capture of life in others.

For me, The Mishkin Gallery never disappoints.  On October 30th the next exhibit, Mercedes Matter, is opening. I know I am looking forward to this one too. I hope that some of you may decide to visit it either to fulfill your arts enrichment workshop or just to take advantage of the wonderful and free art exhibits offered here at Baruch.

More recently, I attended The Buddha Play at the Baruch Performing Arts Center. I had read many positive reviews about this particular piece and wanted to learn more about the Buddha. The sole actor in the show gave a strong performance, but the script tended to wane at points. I felt that if it had been more parsimonious the ability of the audience to really grab on to the message of the play would have been stronger. Even though, this was not my favorite theatrical piece, I did learn about a topic I was not very familiar with previously. So, it was definitely worth my time and money.

The Baruch Performing Arts Center hosts a variety of events throughout the academic year, many with great discounted student rates. Some are even free. It is definitely a great way to expand your horizons and explore the wonderful space that is the BPAC. I know there are still quite a few events on the calendar for this semester that I am looking forward to attending!

~Renee

Hello everyone,

We have exactly a month left until our section of Freshman Seminar has its last meeting! It has been an exciting semester. Please check your Baruch emails for an important message from me.

~Renee

On Thursday, October 22, I went to the Career Planning: Internship and Goal Setting Workshop.  It was held in the multipurpose room from 12:30 to 2:30. The category of the workshop was career exploration. I thought it was a solid workshop. It was extremely organized. The sign-in process was efficent. The content was basic. A lady, the director of internships at Baruch, spoke and went through a powerpoint. Some key highlights were the resources available and how to maxime the benefits from them. As freshman, it is possible for us to go to leadership camps held by top financial companies. I am interested in this. The only problem with this workshop was that it seemed stretched out timewise. I kept on stretching. The lady was a good speaker though. My favorite part and what I took out of this workshop was a packet. It is extremely helpful and highlights the basics of internships. I think this was a good workshop because it introduced the freshmen to internships.

I attended the Sotomayor-Obama era workshop on October 14th where they talked about how the roles of minority are affected/changing over time. The room was overcrowded and there were too many power point presentations than needed. One professor spoke about the increasing population of minorities and why it is essential to know, another spoke about her experiences as a multi-racial woman. I felt that the conversation dragged along and not every question was answered clearly; towards the end of the workshop Prof. Fernandez spoke and she made her lecture more interesting. Instead of talking about how minorities would affect the government, she spoke of how minorities are affecting America’s culture in a negative way – i.e. stereotyping. Racism can not be only found on whites v. minorities but also racism within a minorities’ own culture (light skinned dominicans v. dark skinned dominicans) Stereotyping is  a universal problem; it doesnt just affect our social lives but also political. Obama and Sotomayor went through numerous criticisms before they proved everyone wrong that a minority too has a voice in the government. One of the questions raised was can the recession be blamed on the increasing population of the immigrants which affects health care and whatnot, but i think it cant be blamed to immigrants because they are the ones who fuel the economy.

Title of Workshop: The Changing Nature of Race, Power, and Ethnicity in the Era of Obama and Sotomayor

Category of Workshop: Community-Global Awareness

Date/time: October 14,2009/5:00

With the suggestion of my classmates, I went to the Obama Workshop on the 14th and when I arrived on the 14th floor, it was crowded. There were many people and that there was a powerpoint already set up. This workshop was about how there are still many races around and that is important for us to not to judge other ethnicities. It is also important that we keep a clear mind about their culture and that we have to respect each other in order to understand each other. In addition, I was also shocked that racism is still present. (I actually made a speech in communications class about the March on Washington and when I asked the class if they experienced racism, everyone said no.) There were also four professionals that stood there and talked about statistics and racism. Overall, this was a good workshop yet it was also too tedious.

Because of some error created by the student life organization, the workshop that I went was canceld. So I am oging to wring about the Race, Power, and Ethnicity in the Era of Obama and Sotomayor on last wednesday.

The speech was held by The Department of Black and Hispanic Studies in an open discussion on how the appearance of Obaman and Sotomayor had shape the different ethnic of the world. The discuession have four main speaker, each of them included some facts about the society and their personal expericne.

Thoughout the discussion, the speaker discuess about the fact that African Americans were still in a bad position of the society today in America. Facts and reseraches shows that African American, although lawful equal to anyother ethic groups have higher unemployment rate and generally have lower income. The discuess group also suggest that people still treat African American unequally in daily life under the law! The disscusion concluded in calling for ethic equality under Obaman’s persidency.

Although in general I would suggest that the discussion was a okay one, and I do understand that African Americans are being treat unequally even in today’s world, I would suggest that the speech given by the speaker was a little lack of persuasiveness. Life is just unfair, and that human just temp to treat other race groups that are not their own kind unequally. Certainlly, we can blame that it is the society’s though that treat African American unequally, but we have to also look at other factors that lead to the happen of such a case.

Why did the African Americans still being treat unequalliy within the society after so many years of the Civil War? Was it really the society’s fault, or is it mix with African American’s fault? The Chinese did not came to America until 1940s, and before that the Chiense were not even being care of. Chinese gain nothing after helping the US build the railroad in 1800s but only a law that prevent immigration from China. How then, should Chinese get to be a better situtation in US then African Americans within 50 years? Surely.. the problem is much more then just the society’s fault, but the race itslef too.

Last wednesday I went to the career exploration workshop form starr search, it was call “career planning: impression mangment.”

The workshop is very similar to want I had learn in my BS1000 class, where they teach you the basic of business field. The workshop starting from explaining the basic, for example: how should you start your career, how to prepare your resume. Then the workshop expand onward into more specific stuff like interview, dressing, attitude of work, etc.

I find the workshop very useful. Although I have learn from my high school (which is a business media school) about things I should have learn couple of times already, it is always a good reminder because I temp to forget about it. Also, like what the “common” knowledge in philosophy always talk about, you should just keep listening to it, then it will become a habit of yours and you will look professional.

Besides the business basic that people should follow, I also find it very important for a business profession to have a good communication skills. The lady that represent the starr serach center in the workshop have very good speed skill compare to my history teacher. She is very confident in her speech, very proud of herself. She also have a very good skill in transmitting the information to the audience (which in this case, is me). Her information is very clear, in a good seed and very interesting. Her preformance convince me a lot because I am studying COM 1010 right now and I find her a very good live example of a successful speech.