Section LC15

I am writing this for fun I guess. I have all the blogs written and its always good to give a nice reflection on this course 🙂

So the days of Freshman Seminar have come to an end. I actually enjoyed the class and having a new learning experience. In the beginning I was a bit lukewarm about this class as it might be some cheesy class exploring the history and roots of Baruch and all that other nonsense that I find boring. I also thought the class might be just focusing on some boring things, but the way things turned out was actually different. I’ll admit it that the workshops were kind of boring and a pain attending due to registration, overpopulated rooms and so on. They could have been a bit more organized with them and they way they were hosted. Some could have been hosted in the multipurpose room or even a small lecture room to accompany the vast freshman looking for signatures on their planners. Now the whole thing with signatures is a little funky. I find it a bit of a pain. Like myself, I left the planner at my house countless times. Sometimes Derrick, Bryan, Francis and others would attend workshops and I would tag along with them, and most of the time I would not have my planner with me. I had to improvise and have the signature signed on a piece of paper. It was a pain too since I lost one once, the first signature, but it was  lesson learned. I stashed the papers somewhere safe. The amount of workshops needed is a decent number, but it could be cut down to maybe 4-5. Some of the workshops do really help, like the Math Workshop I attended. It helped me on the math test and the instructor was actually very nice and helpful. As for the Freshman Seminar class itself, it would be cool if it was maybe a little later in the morning and every week rather than every other week. Sometimes I would come in to school and remember that we had no class that day. Sometimes I would miss the class. Now for the peer mentor 😉 Jenny, you are a really good mentor and you and Robert make it more fun too. Like the last class we had was fun, eating donuts and stuff.  Its also nice to have a peer mentor within our age  group as you can share certain experiences and ideas without any problems. Jenny you did a good job on keeping the seminar class fun and cool. You didn’t pressure us and actually gave suggestions throughout the course. Overall, the Freshman Seminar class was a good class and I enjoyed it somewhat. The workshops may have been a pain and the varied class times, but the class itself was cool. Thanks Jenny and hopefully we’ll see you around 🙂

So I tried to make a blog post yesterday but the website was a little stubborn and did not load anything. Anyway, the last workshop I did was the blood. Yup, I decided to donated a fat pound of blood. Now to begin with, the blood drive took place in the Multipurpose room. You initially had to register for it and sadly I didn’t. However, they still took me in and all I had to do was fill out a form about any past injuries or surgeries that I may have had. Anyway, once I filled out the form, all I had to do was wait for them to call me so they can check my blood. The wait was not long and Derrick and Bryan were there too. Once they called my name they took a sample from my finger to test it if the blood is good. It didn’t take long and it was a quick and kinda painless process. Then I had to wait for them to actually take my blood from my vein. Once they called me there, they easily put the needle into my vein and began collecting my blood. It did not take long for me to fill up the blood pouch. It depends on your blood flow and blood pressure. If its low it will take a while. After around 10 minutes of collecting blood, they let me go but I couldn’t leave the room. They told me to wait around 10-15 minutes while consuming some crackers and cookies and drinking juice. The reason for that is so that I would not pass out in the hallways or anywhere else due to the large loss of blood. Now there was an option to donate more blood via ALYX, but I didn’t want to walk around looking like a ghost. I didn’t feel any nausea or any other symptoms after donating blood. They took good care of me while donating blood and after the donation. Overall, it was a smooth and nice workshop. Its a blood drive, nothing more =)

I actually thought i blogged about it until i realized that it was a completely wrong workshop. For the career development workshop I went to a workshop called Impression Management. The speaker talked about how each and every one of us no matter what leave a first impression on everyone who we interact with. He gave helpful tips on how to dress, talk and act on an interview and when you first meet a person, be it for personal or professional reasons. This was a fun and interesting workshop, also very helpful and full of tips on how to not only make the right impression, but also how to not make the wrong one.

This is the final blog that we have to do, and to tell you the truth I’m very excited and happy about that. It felt like just a few weeks ago the semester started and it already finished, it really passed by quick. I think that the idea of a learning community aka LC is a good one. It really helps understand college life a little better and makes it for an easier transition from high school to college. I actually enjoyed most of the workshops I went to for the exception of one. I think it’s not so bad of an idea that we had to go to these workshops, because in the end most of them actually do help. However, the idea of having to blog I didn’t like. It was hard enough to keep up with the greatly increased amount of work that needed to be done for school, topping that with having to go to work, that getting to blog was just…well annoying. Although it wasn’t that much, still we had to do it.
In addition I thought the learning community idea is a good one in a way that it kind of gave us people to become acquainted with when we knew no one at the very beginning. I won’t say that it gave new best friends, but definitely great buddies. Overall a not bad idea at all, again except the blogging. I felt that the information given to us was in fact really helpful, although it did feel like it was very slow paced and that all of it could’ve been given to us within just a few sessions without the need to extend it for the entire semester. As challenging as the whole transition from high school to college as I thought it would be, it wasn’t at all. Probably due to the fact that within the LC we were provided with all or almost all the necessary information we would need. Much thanks to Jenny Tse, our peer mentor, who also made it a fun and enjoyable experience. Good Luck to everyone in the future and hope to see you guys around!

I was originally unhappy about having to attend a freshman seminar, mainly because many other schools don’t have a seminar, and if they do, many give you credit for it. But it wasn’t that bad. I think it helped me adjust to Baruch, and even though none of us liked the workshops, we all got to complain about them to each other. Also, we got a good explanation of the registration process during Freshman Seminar. The woman who spoke to us did a good job of explaining how and where to register for our courses and explained which courses we could and which we needed to take. For the future though, if I had to take this class again, I would have just preferred to come in every week for an hour and not have had to worry about doing all the workshops and blogs on time, especially since there weren’t many workshops in certain categories and they were all crowded.

I also  got 6 points higher on the math test because of Freshman Seminar. I had a lot of time to kill in between Freshman Seminar and the math test, so I was studying, and I aksed Derek to do two questions for me that I didn’t know how to do. Those two exact questions, with the same numbers, just happened to be on the test, and I would have had no idea how to start doing them. If I didn’t have Freshman Seminar I would’ve probably came just in time to sit down for the test and would not have had time to study.

Freshman Seminar was also not bad because of Jenny. Thanks for putting up with us, and I hope this blog isn’t late because I completely forgot the due date, which is why I’m doing them now as I’m finishing my political science paper.

For the academic development workshop i went to the SACC center on Saturday. This unlike the career development workshop, I thought was pretty helpful and useful. It was math tutoring and the teacher/tutor was very serious about what he was doing, and knew what he was doing very well. He concentrated on getting the work done, and teaching whatever people wanted toughed. He also gave helpful tips on what is going to be on the final and also how we should answer the questions on the final. He also thoroughly explained each problem leaving no need to ask questions. This was a very helpful and useful workshop, and one that i would definitely do again.

For the personal enrichment workshop I went to a presentation called “Unemployment tops 10%.” The thing i remember the most is trying to find its location, because online it said that it was in the VC building, however it was really in the library building. This workshop was actually pretty boring. The speakers talked about unemployment and the current situation in the country. They had two view points. One was that the current situation is going to improve soon. And the other point being that this recession will actually last for much longer. Basically they’ve talked about the things people already know, or should know, unless they’re our of this world.

Reflect on your freshman seminar experience.  What did you like/ dislike about the course?  Is there anything you would change/ something you would not change about the course?  Did you feel this course helped your transition become a smoother one (don’t worry, no hard feelings so you guys can be honest!)  How did this course change your view/ affect your freshman experience?

Minimum: 300 words.  Just to reiterate, this blog can fulfill one workshop blog if you are missing one and/ or it can also fulfill the global/ community service requirement since we were unable to go to a community service event together as an lc.

The ethics seminar was a good reminder to everyone that everyday we all make decisions that may or may not be morally or ethically sound. The speaker gave several examples to see what how we (students) would react to the situation. One example was if we would knowingly allow our neighbor to lie on his tax returns so that he would generate the most (return checks) without reporting it. While filing tax returns may not be in our immediate future, an overwhelming amount of people voted (or in this case picked the opposite side of the room since we were asked to get up and go to either side of the room depending on how you felt) that they would not report it. One guy said “It’s none of my business what my neighbor does or doesn’t do.”

The speaker then gave us scenarios closer to home- ones dealing with school such as copying homework from other students, cheating on tests and of course plagiarism on papers. She then told us ways to avoid doing things that we would eventually feel guilty for even when we thought what we were doing were morally sound.

Overall, this was a very helpful workshop.