Essay Clarification

Dear Professor,

This is Abigail Cherubin and I have a few questions regarding the homework you have assigned. In the instructions for the essay you have outlined, states we must describe one social problem related to the themes of the course and employ empirical research. However, I do not understand the specifics of this essay.

With all the works we have done so far in the semester, should I choose a social  problem we’ve identified in the course? Or are you asking to choose my own topic  to do research on? Also, in my essay, should I incorporate a text or several texts we have read?

I would greatly appreciate it if you reply as soon as possible. If there is free time in your schedule, may I meet you in person instead to discuss the details of this assignment. The clarification would aid in understanding the material to be presented. Thank you.

Sincerely,

Abigail Cherubin

New York Times Project

My group decided to choose Business as our overall theme. With the economy taking a huge turn, the effects can be seen in a company’s finances. Also, businesses affect us in every dimension, everyday of our lives. Without it, America would not be the powerhouse it is today. All of our articles have to do with money and how it affects people globally and locally. We also take a look at how companies view themselves and how the outside world views them. For example, in one of the articles chosen, ebay does not think that its revenue was great. However, an investor will see that their stocks were great this quarter. The different aspects of businesses in each article show how it fits into our theme.

As a member, I was the administrator for my group. As the administrator I was also the leader of the group. It was up to me to oversee every action the members of my group did. With my say as final, we made decisions of what we wanted to do. Additionally, I had to make sure everything flowed with our final product. Taking measures to contact every member, together we figured out how the project would developed.

Growing up, I listened and watched a lot of news, therefore I understood what I was doing. It is up to journalists to write comprehensive and accurate articles. Taking the time to understand the news is not difficult, especially if you experience what is happening or notice how it affects your own life. If everyone starts paying attention to the news, soon more people would be more informative of the world around them.

https://blogs.baruch.cuny.edu/naaaprojects/

Let’s Get Down to Business

https://blogs.baruch.cuny.edu/naaaprojects/

So the theme of our group for the NY Times Project was Business. Since all the members of our group are eager to pursue careers in the field of Business, we saw it appropriate to build our blog post around our prospective field. All of our posts revolved around different aspects of business, whether they be stocks, investments, settlements , or finance. The New York Times was simply rife with information regarding the economy and finance, making the decision to choose business as our theme a no brainer.

Our editor, Abigail, divided the work evenly. My individual task was to post two articles in reference to our decided theme. The articles I chose were about the shift in investments since the recession from stocks to private equity and the recent landmark settlement JP Morgan Chase made with the Justice Department due to their dubious practices leading up to the recession. I chose to center my selected articles around the recession because it has directly shaped our current economy. There is so much we can learn from the mistakes prior to the recession, such as the loan practices Chase had employed, as well as analyzing how our market has changed post recession, such as the recent turn towards private equity and away from stocks and bonds.

News literacy is highly essential in today’s environment. Awareness of current events is crucial  for our lives moving forward. We need to be wary of whats going on around us in order to make informed decisions. Due to this project, the Newstand in my iPhone is no longer empty and at any given time my backpack is always housing a newspaper and an issue of Times Magazine.

Hey! Attached is a link to our groups New York Times front page.

https://blogs.baruch.cuny.edu/nytimesaa/files/2013/10/nytfp32.jpg

Our theme is Achievements in American History. We were debating between several topics and in the end settled for this one. Although America’s history is relatively shorter than other nations, it has come a long way to get where it is now. There were many strifes and changes in history and we thought it would be great to highlight some major American achievements. One of the articles I choose was “Obama Elected as Racial Barrier Falls.” African Americans and other minorities have been trying to fight off racial discrimination for over a decade now. When Obama was elected as the first African American president, this was not only a sign of change, but a sign of hope for minorities. The article talks about how Obama gained most of his votes from minorities such as African Americans and Hispanics. He also promised that he would start willing in jobs as soon as his first week in office. The New York Times Article also states that this is the first time since 1995 (Bill Clinton’s term) where Democrats are in control of the Senate, House, and the White House.

Hello Professor Bennett,

My name is Karen and I am in your Philosophy 1500 class on Fridays. I was reading through our textbook last night and did not understand the text by Kant. I don’t understand the part which Kant says “All bodys are extended.” What does he mean by “extended?” Can you review that in the beginning of class next week? Thank you.

– Karen Qiu
PHIL 1500, F 2:30

Dear Professor,

So my groups theme was American Achievements. We came up with this theme because achievements can be made on every level. Achievements occur when we as people change. We are always changing in our lives, especially now that we all started college. We come to college to achieve and strive for success. We all picked articles that were important in history or to ourselves. Then our group administrator, Tonia Mathew, put all our articles onto one page and made it look as incredible as it does.

A few of the achievements we decided to focus on were some of the important ones throughout history. We talked about the Civil Rights Act, the Rover on Mars, Women’s rights, walking on the moon for the first time and New York passing a law allowing gay people to marry.

The article I picked was the one with New York passing the legislation to allow gay marriage. I picked this article because it really was a big deal. New York is now the biggest state to allow gay marriage. It’s incredible how far we as people have come. That being said, upstate New York is very conservative so I was surprised to see that this law was not only passed in New York City, but also the whole state of New York. This shows how we can change as a society. Not all people accept gay marriage, but in 100 years from now, people will look back and think it was so stupid that we argued about this.

https://blogs.baruch.cuny.edu/nytimesaa/

So here is the email I would sent and had to post here.

Hey Professor Bennett,

My name is Peter Lewicki and I’m in your Philosophy 1500 class on Fridays. As you noticed, I was absent for last weeks midterm. I was wondering if I would be able to make it up because I had caught the flu last Thursday and Friday it had gotten so terrible, that I had to be taken to the hospital. Thank you and I’ll see you next week.

-Peter Lewicki

This is prompt number 1:

Our group theme was “American Achievements”. We chose to use this as our theme for the New York Times front page to highlight the positive aspects of America in the midst of various hardships. Furthermore, we are all attempting to achieve a huge accomplishment, and doing this theme shows what we must strive for. Baruch College will be a stepping stone in helping us accomplish this goal, and we realized the importance our college careers will be onward for our lives.

The first article I chose to use was about the Curiosity Rover. I selected this because the space race America was undergoing finally showed signs of a lead for America. With America’s successful launch of the Curiosity Rover drone, they are now able to collect minerals and specimens from the planet Mars, which has never been done before. This relates back to me because it showed how technologically innovative America could be. It provides knowledge to me knowing that the country provides resources such that anyone could do anything if they aspired to.

The second article I chose was the Bearcat article about the opening of the East 25th Plaza last December. This was clearly important because of how convenient and helpful this release was to me, and many other Baruch students. I cannot imagine how the other students must have felt before the opening of the plaza. The library would be much more dangerous to go to, and many students would have no where to go to hang out. Being a freshman, I was unaware of these hardships, and am glad I am not going to.

Our  theme was Education.  Education is something we all need and experience through our lives even if we don’t exactly attend school.  Currently we are all enrolled in
Baruch and that is our form of education.  Whether we are involved in school or not, it takes part of our daily lives.  Each of our posts had to do with either the problems faced in education systems and how it affects each of our lives.  We all came up with our own articles which were incorporated into the theme of education.   News is international and whether it be on the opposite side of the globe it affects all of us.  Even though each  country nationalistic about itself,  we all learn from each other.  Everyone has different opinions about every situation, but the news brings it all together and helps people learn about what is surrounding every one of us.

https://blogs.baruch.cuny.edu/nytimesprojectteamgack/