LC 20

Everybody started college with a thought that it will be a long journey. But hey, the fall semester is about to end. Time does fly. Here, I want to talk about our Learning Community 20, the different classes, and finally my goals.

Coming to Baruch, I did not have friends who have the same class as me. But thanks to Learning Community, I made friends. Everybody in LC 20 has the same schedule with exceptional of math. We managed to overcome four months of hardship together. The exams in Business class, the rationality or morality in Philosophy class, the never ending red pen mark of errors in English class, etc. We have come so far, and I wish everybody good luck in their next semester.

I must say, I failed the goal of reaching a 4.0 GPA because I procrastinated too much. I will have to work on time management and procrastination more from now on. And I have to work on my grammar for English class. College is harder than high school, if you do not watch out, you will slack off slowly. So get ready and pick up the pace.

On October 26, 2010, all the freshmen had a mandatory workshop called ‘East — West Identity: Journeys & Transformations’. We met the author of the Book Bitter Sea, Charles Li Na, and watched a panel discussion featuring Charles Li Na, Professor Stan Altman, Professor Tashi Chodron, and Professor Katrin Hansing. The conversation started interesting, with the panelists discussing their experiences in the past and how it shaped who they are. But after 10 minutes, people started to dose off and do their own things. There are very little interactions between the panelist and the students; it is hard for the students to pay attention. But at the end, author, Charles Li Na, allowed students to ask questions directly. I enjoyed the last part the most. I had the urge to ask questions, but I was too shy. Overall, I would not want to go to a workshop like this, but if the whole workshop is about question and answering then I would be happy to join.

The Mishkin Art Gallery

 On Thursday, members of LC 20 went to the Mishkin Art Gallery. It was located on the 23^rd street. After we have made sure that everyone was there, we headed to the gallery.

                First, I had no idea how the place would look like and what kind of art would there be, so I thought the Mishkin Art Gallery was like one of those galleries you see in museums. When we first walked through the door, the Gallery surprised me. What we saw was photographs of various social groups hanging on the wall. Normal museum will have enormous varieties of art like sculptures, paintings, status, etc., which are too complex and boring.  Personally, I like photograph because it is easy to understand. The design of the room was interesting; there were walls that were designed to make the room look like a maze, the design allows more photographs to be hanged.

                The director gave us a tour; she explained that the theme of the photographs was social groups.   Everyone belong to a certain group, everybody belong to their family group. Aside from that, there are the school groups, the club groups, the military groups, the music groups, etc. You can belong to any social groups you can ever imagine. One of the groups that stroked me was the military children; the director mentioned the movie Blood Diamond which was a movie related to the military children. I told myself that I would watch the movie when I get home. The other social group that caught my attention was the Rwanda Genocide group. This group caught my attention because when I was in Junior High School, I saw a movie relating to the genocide in my social studies class. I left the gallery with understandings of the meaning of social groups. As human beings, we need companionships to make our lives more interesting. Even though there are bad social groups, but I believe that there are more good social groups.

I really enjoyed my first semester at baruch college. I had alot of fun with my LC and made a bunch of new friends through the group work we had to do for projects and just through hanging out with them after class. In the beginning of the semester I was actually nervous about making new friends. Honestly, I thought the majority of people in college would be stuck up, but it was actually the complete opposite. Everyone was very nice and helpful whether it be professors, other students and peer mentors. I was really able to assimilate into college based on the learning bloc I was in as wel as freshman seminar. One thing I was fearfu of was making classes for next semester and after we had the class speaker that explained how to make classes I elt better and more confident about making my schedule for next semeter. In my eyes that was the two most helpful parts about freshman seminar and the learning community was the fact that it made it easier for us to make friends and taught us how to make classes for next semester.

Omar Abdel Salam

In this event our LC went to the panel discussion with he author of the Bitter Sea. Charles N. Lee was surprising more americanized than I thought. Even though he had a Chinese american accent, his sense of humor really put got attention. He still seemed to be in a very good shape after all that he’s been through. I thought the toll of living in China and the slums would have a big impact on his  physical features. Although I found the author to be very interesting the overall mood of everyone seemed to be very bored. I can’t say I wasn’t part of that crowd in the beginning of the discussion but when it got to the questions from my fellow peers it was a breath of fresh air. Before this at one point our LC were all doing our own thing and so was everyone else in the room. There was a guy a couple of rows below me who had fell asleep after ten minutes of introduction. Overall i thought of this Academic Enrichment meeting to be satisfactory.

I’ve been through the good and the tiresome times here in Baruch. My first thought when I arrived at Baruch was “wow i don’t think i’m going to pass” but over time even though class have been very demanding I had found many ways to work around the massive homeworks. Not really work around it but more like finding an inspiration to actually do it. Homework was never an attractive thing to me but thanks to the freedom that we get to choose whatever topic we want, it has made homework  just something one would enjoy doing. I would have to say my less enjoyable class had to be philosophy. I like the lectures overall but the reading has just been a pain. Overall i think the semester has gone on really well for me.  Although there were the hard times , my favorite part about Baruch so far has to be our LC. Hanging out with my LC made everything more enjoyable because we don’t have to worry what everyone might think of you because being in an LC is basically just a group of friends. During these three quick months  I had meet a lot of new friends. What was good about meeting all these new people were that everyone came from a different part of the city so it made everything more interesting. Out those bunch of friends I’ve meet there were ones who were always there in times of need. Everytime I needed to know something about an event or homework someone was always there. I think i made a good decision in coming to Baruch and hopefully three years from now I would still think the same.

I came to Baruch College with very low expectations on social life and making friends. After reading tons of reviews on the college and it’s poor social life, it wasn’t something I would look forward to at all. All I expected was intense stress from the college workload and spending over 2 hours a day commuting back and forth just like the majority of other students at Baruch. However LC20 proved me wrong. I’m so grateful to have met such a group of humorous people that are all very down-to-earth and easy to talk to. It’s nearly impossible to make friends in individual classes, especially lecture halls. And LC20 made it possible for me to easily adapt in the transition to college. One thing I would’ve done differently is study harder and finish assignments in a timely fashion (philosophy homework…). I’m still in the process of learning how to manage my time, considering how much freedom we have. I’m starting to think short-term deadlines are better than long-term ones like philosophy class for instance. Too much freedom can easily be abused. All in all my first semester at Baruch College was pretty good, all thanks to LC20.

This was probably the best workshop I went to. It was about  networking. I really learned a lot from it. It was fun and I was with friends. There was a lot of participation from the audience which helped the over all perspective. I felt that the moderator knew what she was doing. This really helped the program. I learned about business cards and how to give/recieve them, i learned about LinkedIn and I learned more about my friends and the people there from all the exercises we did. I really liked this workshop and would recommend it to any person taking freshman seminar next year.

-Daniel Edward

This unfortunatley was a mandatory workshop. The author of the Bitter Sea, Charles Li, came to talk to us along with a panel of people to discuss the journey of finding your identity. This was probably the worst workshop I had to go to. Although I was with my friends and I could still fool around, there was no escaping the dullness of the workshop. It had the potentialof  being  great, however, the speakers didn’t seem to have any enthusiasm. It would have helped a lot if the speakers had sounded like they liked what they were talking about. Also, open up more questions from the audience. We were there for 2 hours and the only time we asked questions were during the last 5-10 minutes. By that time we all wanted to leave.

-Daniel Edward