Section LC05

I attended the diversity conference early in the year. It was a “slow” start to the year. The conference was supposed to discus the advantages of having a divers school, student body and staff.  The main speaker however deviated from this focus and began retelling his experiences at Stony Brook and how he tried and had some success in  opening programs in Stony Brook which used a divers student body to their advantage.  This experience would have been useful if he had suggested ways to implement it at Baruch college or to give reasons why the programs he started in Stony Brook benefited from their divers student body. He did neither. In addition to this speaker there was a panel of Baruch staff and students who made valid points about diversity and told more relevant information and opened new questions. Like the self segregation of groups from each other.

This was a disappointment. Mercedes Matter had some interesting pieces of art but most of it was generic abstract art. The straw that broke the camels back for this workshop was the tour guide. Instead of adding excitement and enlightening us by her interpretation of Matter’s artwork she simply did a brief description of the work. Pointed out that through out her life Matter had been reexamining still life’s. Hearing that doesn’t inspire anyone, it devalued the art and the artist. The long wait to get into the gallery was defiantly not worth the wait.

It was what you would expect a club fair to be. Held in the gym, lots of people and not well organized.

Baruch brags about its large number of clubs, as it should however the club fair was nothing to brag about. Overcrowded, not all of the clubs listed as existing in the school were there. The DJ set up in the back was having technical difficulties and never got them fixed. It looked as if there were going to be several performances from members of different clubs but they never happened. The performers looked annoyed. There was no map of where the clubs were going to set up their stands so finding the clubs you were interested in was not a easy task. But if you overlook these details it got the job done. You could sign up for the club you wanted if you were dedicated enough.

11/24/09 – 12:50PM-2:10PM in VC 3-215

This workshop was about how to give people a good first impression. Most of the information presented in the powerpoint presentation was common sense, such as being enthusiastic (but not overly so), genuinely interested, and welcoming when you meet someone. The presentor mentioned how we are always making an impression, whether knowingly or not. We had to find a person we didn’t know in the room and talk to them about what three challenges we think we’ll encounter in the next term. I didn’t learn anything new from this workshop, but the presentor made the workshop interesting and engaging. He was enthusiastic about the topic and his voice definitely kept everyone’s attention. The workshop did not feel boring and the time passed by quickly. Overall, this workshop did not teach my anything I didn’t know already, but it was a nice presentation to refresh my knowledge about first impressions.

This so far has been the best workshop that I have attended out of any other workshop. Since I came to Baruch, people have always been stressing “INTERNSHIPS! INTERNSHIPS! INTERNSHIPS!” And this workshop gave me a place to find out about how to start with finding one. The speaker, the director of internships at STARR, thoroughly went through the process of finding internships and making the most of an internship experience. She also gave us a booklet that summarized everything she went over in the workshop, and information on upcoming career fairs and events. Overall, I believe that these career workshops are among the most useful, and that those that are in FRO sections should attend them, and not just to get credit, because everything that you learn in these will help later in life.

11/17/09 – 1:00pm-2:00pm  in the Sidney Mishkin Gallery building

This workshop was the one of the last Arts at Baruch workshops, so there were many people that attended. The line was very long, and I waited for a whole hour before I went into the gallery (they let in groups of 20 people).  Overall, I was disappointed by this workshop.

At first, I was very surprised that Baruch has an art gallery because Baruch is so much of a business school. I was kind of excited to go to this workshop.

However, because of time constraints (I was part of the second to last group to enter the gallery), the woman introducing the artwork had to rush our group and only briefly explained about the highlights of the gallery. The woman also briefly talked a bit about modern art in general and how modern artists tend to stray away from realism because photographs can capture the real world better. What she had did have time to introduce to us was quite interesting. It was interesting how Mercedes Matter utilized triangles as foundations in her paintings. I wish we could have some time to go around the gallery and look at the paintings ourselves. I am more able to explore and enjoy the artwork this work.

I felt like I wasted my time waiting for an hour, but I do understand why there were so many students attending this workshop. The gallery tour would have been much more enjoyable if we had more time and freedom to browse the gallery by ourselves.

The “Gallery Tour: Mercedes Matter: A Retrospective” workshop was one that I was excited to attend. Baruch, being a business school, focuses a lot on the factual side of the world and I was eager to experience the artistic side. Sadly, I was disappointed by the experience. I attended the workshop thinking I would be able to walk into a building with white walls and hung paintings waiting for me to examine them. In actuality, I had to wait for at least 45 minutes before entering the gallery. When I entered the building, the end of the line was close to the entrance. I joined the line under the impression that the gallery had not opened yet. The workshop, according to the information on the Baruch website, was supposed to start at 1pm and I arrived there at 12:50pm. After standing on line for 20 minutes I realized that they were only allowing a specific number of people in at a time. The best part of the workshop I would say was the security guard. He was humorous and was able to give me information the people in charge were unable to provide me with. I found out that it was a tour of the gallery rather than being able to view the paintings at my own leisure. I also found out from the security guard that they were only allowing 20 people in at a time. When I entered the gallery, I was immediately rushed to place my book bag in a designated area, sign in and wait for the tour to start. I would like to say the tour guide was doing a good job after conducting the tour a few times already but the tour was still unbelievably boring. It could’ve been because I was restless after standing on line for so long or because the tour was mostly factual rather than various interpretations of the painting. The tour guide stopped at a couple of paintings from the gallery rather than allowing the group to examine all of Mercedes Matter’s art work. There were paintings that I would’ve loved to spend more time with but was unable to. One painting was a painting of various features of a face: eyes, nose, and lips. I was disappointed because I wanted to examine the paintings more and discuss them with friends rather than having someone talk about them. I would not recommend this workshop. If you wanted to view paintings by Mercedes Matter I would recommend a Museum.

This career exploration workshop on internships was in the VC building in room 3-215 on Tuesday 11/10/2009 at 12:30PM. It was a very helpful workshop. I learned so much on internships, what firms are looking for, and how to search for them. Being a freshman, I know that I am already a step ahead by just attending the workshop.

I know that this workshop is a great benefit for me in the long run because it’s important to know what internships are about and how to get them. The economy is in a bad shape but getting the internships will look very good on my resume and that will help me get a job. I am very glad that I attended the workshop and I know I will not regret it.

My last and final workshop! I signed up 2 weeks before hand to ensure my seat for this because I found this Starr Career workshop to be essential. When i walked into the room, there were about only 50 or so students, and i really had expected it to be crowded. The entire presentation was done on a power point and the speaker spoke cleary and concisely on the do’s and don’ts of an interview. But after the first 15 minutes everything seemed to be so informative that i began to lose my attention span, but maybe thats just me, but it would have been better if she prepared a mock interview with a student or videos of examples of good and bad interview protocols. The best part about this workshop was that it was helpful, even though it was basic, there was a lot covered, i heard they also have an advanced interviewing workshop, so many i would sign up for that in the future, but hopefully the presentation would be more interactive.