Section LC20

I went to this workshop on 11/12, 12:30 to 2:30. I was a little bit late, so the room was filled with people.  There are no seats left, so I stood for entire workshop (two hours!). But two hours of standing worth something. The speaker is an employee of the federal government, she came to talk about the federal job search and federal resume writing. Oh, by the way, she gave out powerpoints to help understand the information, that is really helpful, I think all other workshops should do that, too. She first explained that the wages and benefits are much better than private companies or corporations. She proved it with many charts full of datas. She then went on to talk about the process to apply for federal jobs. Internships are also availiable, both short term and long term, it is also easier to become a formal employee if internship of federal jobs are shown on resumes.  She then showed us how federal job resume works, it is totally different from normal ones.  Finally, she went to the webiste of the federal jobs and did an example of how to apply for federal jobs. Overall the speech was pretty useful and nice, but just a little bit too long, and not too many interactions between the speaker and the audiance. So I think they can improve by shortening it and give more time for the audiance to ask questions. I think this is pretty good, and I enjoyed it. (except for the part that I stood for so long and my legs hurt)

On Octber 22nd, 2009 I went with my friend to the career planning workshop. There, they discussed what Baruch options and assistance Baruch students have in finding their niche in the workplace. Baruch seems to be a school full of very work oriented students, so I would see this resource as being utilized very often. Although I have a job now, if i were to be looking for an office position i would most likely go through the Starr Career Development center.

The workshop was not very informative. Our freshman workshop teacher had previously shown us the starr website, so i was aware of their services and options. The workshop was too long, over two hours, when the information could have easily been said in thirty minutes. It left my friend and i worrying if we had enough time to get lunch before class. Furthermore, the speaker had an obnoxious tone and was quite condescending, which did not seem to engage the students.

On 10/20/09 I went to the Academic Advisement workshop. It was very insightful in what i need to do as a freshman to sign up for classes. The speaker was very friendly and informative.  Now i know what to do when i need to register for classes for next spring. Compared to other workshops, this was perhaps my favorite because it was the most useful. I enjoyed looking at my options and requirements. Although it is kind of annoying that baruch has so many requirements, they are probably classes i would take anyways, so i do not mind that much.

On November 19 I attended the  job fair preparation workshop. At the workshop, we had two Verizon representatives talking to us about how to prepare for interviews and tips on leaving a good impression. They discussed networking, the do’s and dont’s, they talked to us about the 30 second elevator speech, and how to overcome our fears of not having experience. The discussion lasted an hour and a half and they had a power point presentation ready for us to follow along with what they were saying. They also talked to us about how we should present our information to the potential emplyoyer.

Overall, it was a very beneficial workshop. I learned a lot of neat and helpful tips that I will keep in mind when I go to interviews, and they also gave us two packets, so just in case I forgot the hints or anything that said, I have a synopsis  of the workshop to look over. I came into the workshop not knowing how to efficiently present myself at a job interview, and now I feel I am much more ready when I try to network and get a job. I would definately attend another workshop, similar to this one, to help build my networking and interview skills.

On November 12 I attended the Mediating Conflict and resolving disputes at Baruch workshop. During this workshop we were taught the steps to go about fixing a problem that we have at Baruch. We were told how the school has a mediating department, and the representative we had in the room talking to us about conflicts in Baruch was actually the head of that department. We started off by defining problems that we have in Baruch. Some of the ideas we brought forth had to do with the elevator problem, where people enter from the exit side rather than the enter side, and how that frustrates many people. We also talked about the offices in Baruch, such as the orientation office and how they lose our paperwork sometimes and how that frustrates us.

What we were told was how to go about dealing with that situation, and in fact, our major accomplishment from the workshop was that we had chosen a representative to go to the Student Affairs Office and talk to somebody about the freshman workshops. We were told to make our voice heard and tell the office that they should abolish this program. We made a list of complaints such as, they arent organized efficiently, people who register don’t always get into the workshop when it is full because people that didn’t register go there before them, nobody wants to go to them to start with, and the schedule is flawed because some workshops, such as the academic enrichment workshops ended at the start of the school year, so for those people that couldn’t make one of those workshops were out of luck and they would have to repeat the course next semester. This was overall, a good workshop because I found out how to go about dealing with problems in Baruch, when apparently, there are a lot of them, as we pointed out durin the workshop.

On November 17 I attended the gallery tour Mercedes Matter: a retrospective. The event started at 1 pm but we went in to view the gallery in groups. I was the part of the third group to go in so I had to wait about 40 min to go in. The tour itself was fairly short and only lasted about 15 min. The gallery was very small and contained artwork from 3 stages of Matter’s life. The artwork from her childhood was displayed, after she became older, and then her artwork from the end of her life (her maturity phase as our tour guide called it).

The art of Matter is from the modern period, and her focus wasn’t to show ideal forms but rather an impression of the form. Her focus was mainly using different colored paint and making an abstract image, where you had to analyze it for a little bit to figure out what it was. For example, one of her images was made up of triangles and lines and you would have to figure out what the image represented, and in turn, it was a table being flipped and all the objects on the table about to fall. As Matter grew older her images increased in size and complexity, and became more abstract. The art gallery was short, but it was interesting looking at the artwork of a modern age artist. Even though you couldn’t decifer what everything in the painting was itwas interesting to look at how the artist was trying to convey her idea.