Section BXZ4A

I attended this workshop on November 23rd. This was my favorite workshop. An author who is currently writing a book entitled, “Horatio Alger lives in Brooklyn… But Check His Papers.” I recognized the name from history class. Horatio Alger was an author who wrote books about working class people gaining small success. The author is using him to draw a parallel to the modern day working class, many of whom are immigrants. The author is a sociologist and followed a number of Mexicans in California as they grew up. According to established theories on sociology, the way that many of these Mexicans behaved indicated that they were not destined for success. The author’s data contradicts this notion and found that many went on to have successful jobs and few went on to be involved in crime or have menial jobs. He was engaging and kept me interested in his work throughout the workshop.

I attended this workshop on November 17th. It was an exhibit on the work of Mercedes Matter, a modernist painter. This was one of the more interesting workshops that I have attended. Her work was split between 3 eras, early middle and late. Over time her work became more abstract. In her middle period you could still recognize what she was drawing with relative ease but recognizing anything in her late era was difficult. The use of triangles came up in many of her works. Our guide narrated her life’s work well. This was the first time I went on a small gallery tour like this. I feel like I have a new appreciation for abstract art because Matter’s was analyzed and explained for me on the tour.

This week was one of the most hectic weeks of college I’ve experienced so far.. and its only wednesday. First of all, I havn’t slept more than ten hours in the past 4 days. I spent a lot of time late at night and continuing on to early in the morning writing my 6 page english paper. This was our last paper which meant it was very important that I do well to get the highest grade possible. The essay took 3 all-nighters to complete. Of course, I’m the only one to blame because like all the previous essays, I put it off till last minute. While working on the essay, I also had to worry about a quiz for history class on tuesday and a calculus test on wednesday. I ended up doing bad on both because after working on my essay, I had no energy or patience left to study. Even though I hope the next two weeks will be better, I know it wont because of finals and two more papers due. College sucks.

I forgot to blog about my last workshop because I’ve been so busy lately. However, I still remember most of what happened during the workshop. We were given food in the beginning which is always a good thing. Since this was my last workshop, I didn’t really pay much attention to what was going on because I wanted to get it over with quickly but that was also because I already knew most of what they were saying. They talked about how to manage your money and not end up in debt which was actually quite useful information. I would say this workshop wasnt so bad but could have been shorter.

this workshop is about suicide issues. from the video i watched there, i found out that suicide mostly happen on college students and there are more deaths due to suicide than to accidents homicides and war combined. depression is one major reason why people attempt to suicide. so we have to keep an eye on ourselves and people around us, be happy and thing toward positive ways so we can avoid being depress.

This workshop was held 12/1 in room 8-210 at 4. This workshop was more of a speech or lecture by this women that was taking about the globalization of cultures and beliefs. it was overall boring and not understandable. The women was talking about things that i had no idea what she was talking about. i was also bored by her monotone voice. I didn’t learn anything and it was boring. Other professors that were in the room looked like they thought it was interesting so i am sure it would just the students that didn’t think it was interesting.

This gallery was at 22nd street which was about 2 blocks from the NVC. It was held at 1 ish and ended really quickly because of the small groups that were taken in at once. It was a very interesting gallery because it felt a bit like MoMA. The art was pretty abstract and most of the work was of “still life”. The women that was bring us around was telling us about Mercedes Matter’s different works from different stages in her life. Some of the earlier works were less abstract which more of the later works are more abstract. Personally the later works looks like a lot of random colors on canvas which was not really my idea of art. Overall the gallery workshop was pretty orderly and was a nice twist to the usual workshops in the NVC. It was fun but i didnt learn anything from it.

i found myself so lucky because i did not have to take so long to register for my classes for spring section. before the registration date, my friend and i came up with an ideal schedule we wanted for the spring and on that day, i just had to log in and got all the classes i wanted. for the sociology one, i could not registered at first but then i tried it again and took the last seat of that section. so i do encourage you guys to try not only once but at least 3 times, or even 5, to wait for someone to drop that class so you can take it, and you do not have to re-schedule yours just because you can not take that one class.

i do not think this is really a workshop because at the time i walked in there, the man who was about to give out a speech based on his research was shocked that there were many teenagers walking in for this because before me, so many older adults were already sitting there. this was about perspectives on immigration lecture. i am an immigration and i know how immigrants’ lives are at the time they got to a new country. the man did researches on immigrants’ lives at the time they got here and few years later. he pointed out how some of them can succeed and some can not. it was a great lecture, he had many specific examples for it and stated out many interest points about people from different countries lived different lives.

this is the only workshop that i disliked because it was so boring and i had to wait for an hour to get in. this workshop was held in the other building which is located in 22nd street. the Sidney Mishkin galley was not as large as i expected. the art works in there are from the artist’s earliest work to the latest. by looking at them, i really can not tell why they are so famous and so expensive, maybe i do not have the ability to enjoy those modern arts. since this is kind of the only choice we can attend for the art at baruch workshop, i believed some of you just had the same feeling as i did about this one. but anyway, it was a quick one, it took me one hour to get in there and only 15 min to finish the workshop.