FRO13 LC06

Sorry for the late post. picture that describes my first semester experience at Baruch is this:

Procrastination was always part of my highschool life. I thought that I would be fine procrastinating like the usual in college also. However my thoughts on it changed. It’s way too hard to keep up with works with doing things last minute. To be honest, I still procrastinated this first semester such as doing my homeworks the day of it is due, writing essays last minute, studying last minute and such. However this gave me another level of stress that I’ve never felt before. So next semester, and from now on I don’t plan on procrastinating. I hope this post would be my last work of procrastination. Throughout this first semester at Baruch I’ve experienced many feelings. I realized how important it is to be involved in school. Especially meeting variety of great people. Knowing more people and working with them helped me to engage in more school activities and do better in academic work wise also. I also learned the importance of having good professors for classes. I dropped my math class the second day of class because I could not stand the professor. So I took a lot of time into picking out my second semester classes and choosing good professors with good ratings on the ratemyprofessor.com. I don’t really remember what I learned from Enrichment Workshop because I, like everyone else, was so caught up with studying for the history midterm. But I can say that it was a good experience. There are many things I like about being in college. I don’t feel young even though I am a freshman like how I felt in highschool. upper classmates still treat our grade with respect. Commuting isn’t as bad as I thought it would be. I see my friends who are dorming complaining about being homesick, food, and people they are with living with, I’m glad that I can still spend time with my family, eat home food and feel comfortable at home. I can also manage time between work and school better with commuting. It’s fascinating to see so many people work so hard in this school. Library is always packed, students are studying so hard. Students in Baruch motivate me to try harder also. I hope that I can try harder next semester and not procrastinate. I hope to stay close with the people that I met this semester for the rest of the college years. I like Baruch even though I hear a lot of people complaining about this school very often. This is a school where I can be myself, gives me opportunities, and get involve more easily. I plan on staying in this school all four years and hope to be proud of the fact that I graduated from Baruch later. Hopefully next semester would bring greater experience for me and that I will be a hard worker. Can’t wait for the break to start.

Kevin Liu 11/29

During the enrichment workshop, the presentation was pretty interesting. Even though I didn’t pay much attention I still got a lot out of it. It talked about volunteering and its importance. I agreed with the presentation because as freshmen at Baruch, we all had to volunteer for New York Cares in freshman seminar class. This workshop related to my experiences volunteering at the New York Library for New York Cares. I had to reorganize the whole library and I felt good after doing it. I was happy that children came to the library and was able to find the books they wanted because of my reorganization.

The above picture described my first semester of freshman year at Baruch. I came from high school not expecting so much to do in college. But I was wrong, there were a lot of things to do and take responsibility of. The transition from high school to college was a big leap for many reasons. Considering the amount of classes I had, it was a lot of work because I barely had enough time to do work for all classes. Freedom was a good thing of college that was a new experience. The ability to choose my classes at a certain time with a certain professor was just the perfect option for me. The next thing I have to worry about is the finals for my classes. Considering that I have a lot to do, it would be time consuming to study all the topics for the finals. The second semester at Baruch I will try to do better and hopefully be more comfortable. I want to be more involved in school activities to make my life less boring.

Zi Lee

Freshman Seminar

Professor Happonen

11-29-13

Although I wasn’t paying much attention to the enrichment workshop, I get the overall idea of what it is about. The speaker basically talked about volunteering and happiness and asked if there was a correlation between the two. Despite the fact that I didn’t watch the film, I can say happiness is the aftermath of volunteering. I started volunteering in junior year of high school at New York Hospital of Queens. At first, I did it because my college advisor said that having some community service records look good on my high school transcript. After the very first day of volunteering, I found out that I really liked helping patients. The gratitude shown on their faces really made my hard work paid off. Although it’s cumbersome to take 4 hours of your homework time to volunteer, all I can say I really enjoyed the experience and hope to return there one day. Another instance is the New York Care Project I signed up for last month. I was assigned to organize clothes at a factory in a deep part of Queens. Even though I didn’t see the poor people receiving the clothes I organized, I can already imagine their excitement and joyfulness to finally have meticulous clothes to wear. At last, I really enjoy doing community services on my free time and it has been one hell of an experience for me. There are a lot of people in need out there and we can ALL make a difference!

My first semester in Baruch has been a fiasco. I felt really confident coming into college thinking that I will ace every course. Unfortunately, it was completely opposite from what I have expected. I was so adapt to my ways of dealing with schoolwork in high school which have dramatized my GPA for this semester. Time management and procrastination is not my bread and butter. The worst part of this semester is my math professor and the class in general. How are you going to put a student who has never taken Calculus in his life with students who took Calculus but got less than a 4 on the AP test? It such an enigma to me why this has already happened and I only been here for 2 months. My math professor is another conflict. He likes to complicate things and never explain the rudimentary of Calculus. Second, I finally realized English is a very unfair course. I always thought that if one spends time and efforts on one’s paper, then one will definitely get a well-deserved grade. Unfortunately, that theory is proven false in my first semester. In my class, I see people who just have better writing skills than me which give them an upper advantage over me in obtaining a good grade. They have spent less efforts and time, but yet still a higher grade than me. I must submit to the fact “Life isn’t fair” and hard work DOES NOT pay off. Finally, I’m going to reiterate the fact that my first semester is horrendous and hopefully I can prevent this problem in my upcoming years in Baruch with my diligence and determination.

Youngsoo Shin

FRO 1000

11/29/13

Happonen

Enrichment Workshop response

I would say that the enrichment workshop was sort of interesting. The things the professors lectured about was kind of useful to know and apply to our lives. The relationship between happiness and volunteering was, in my opinion, the main point of the whole workshop. It got me thinking about whether or not I was doing the NY Cares volunteering just to get credit or for the excitement it brings in my life. Being a volunteer for a summer school for over five years, I can proudly say that I did NY Cares for both reasons. Although I wanted to get credit, it actually meant something to the people I was organizing the clothes for. But now that I can actually go out and obtain paying jobs, I really don’t plan on doing more volunteering, unless there is a great cause for it. I can’t really say there was anything else I learned form the workshop because most of our classmates were studying for a history midterm.

This was my first impression of Baruch. From touring other colleges, I thought college would be a place where it would be a pain to walk around. But looking at Baruch, I was always wondering where the rest of it was. Our school seemed very small compared to private schools, but I can understand because of the tuition difference. But my first semester can be portrayed through a different picture, something more stressful. The transitioning from high school to college was extreme and it was hard to play catch up all the time. Also the commuting that took over an hour made me late to many classes all the time. I would say college would be for someone who is ready for the fast pace and workload. Thinking about me when I actually take my major-classes, I think about even more workload and it kind of stresses me out even more. Next semester I want to be more involved in clubs and different activities, instead of going home immediately after class. But I plan to stay in Baruch for four years instead of transferring to a different school. I would say the best part of college is actually getting paid from federal aid. Most private schools cost over $40,000, but mine would be in the negatives.

During the enrichment workshop, I learned more about volunteering and the feelings you get out of it. The timing was not that satisfying because on the same day, we had to study for our exams. I learned that volunteering isn’t to just help other people but it also helps you as a person. For my task for New York Cares, I had to guide people of all ages to their assigned bus. Seeing the excitement of everyone and just getting to socialize with everyone was a positive experience. I had to wake up very early that morning to make it to the event but otherwise, it set a good mood.

This photo shows how I felt throughout the first semester of my freshman year. This pretty much shows how much more work I got at college rather than high school. I rarely ever studied or read for high school and was still able to achieve scores around the 90’s. Once I came to Baruch, it felt as if you would be left out if you didn’t study. Students, here, are all competitors and are striving for the best so I must step up my game. Even though I am studying now, I am not able to reach my goal of having an A in every class. I believe, in the future, college would get easier because I would start improving my method of studying. This photo resembles that because in this anime, the main character runs into a situation that seems like he would never going to be able to face. With time and training, he has become so advanced that when he gets involved in the same scenario again, he doesn’t show any signs of struggle. The screaming part of this picture is how I feel when I realize I have a paper or exam the next day. Sometimes, you have to just release all that stress by screaming or doing whatever possible. This semester was perfect, I’m looking forward to the next.

Enrichment workshop
Due to the approach of history midterm just after the enrichment workshop, I didn’t pay much attention to the presentation in enrichment workshop. However, I know that the enrichment workshop in generally is about the relationship between happiness and volunteering. The orator concluded that when individual gives “gifts” (mental or physical help) to others, they will feel happy because they have the ability and the opportunity to help others to solve problems or leave the miserable situations.

For myself, I realized that I had the opportunity to meet different people around the neighborhood when I was volunteering. I could gain different perspectives on how people solve problems from different points of view. I also recognized that how different people gain and see from the same situation.

My first semester in Baruch

I think the first semester in Baruch for me is very stressful. There are so many differences between high school and college. The courses in high school are extremely easy except the AP courses. During my senior year in high school, I didn’t have the motivation to work hard because I thought those courses were not very challenging for me.

However, life becomes very different when I attended Baruch College. I feel like the pace for students at Baruch College is very quick. There are not very little or very much readings for one single course, but the combination of those readings in one day is extremely too much for me. Moreover, I don’t have much time to have lunch during the breaks and to have enough sleep. There are too many vocabularies for HIS courses, and my notes for that class are not organized. Therefore, I need to spend my weekend to arrange my notes, finish homework assignments, and tons of readings.

Even though the first semester is very stressful for me, I believe it is the best choice for me to attend Baruch College. The courses are challenging, so I have the motivation to overcome the challenges. The programs are wonderful, so I enjoy the environment of Baruch. The professors are great except the Math professor; they helped me to improve and develop myself during the first semester. By the way, I’m really glad that I don’t have many exams to take for my first semester courses.

This is my post about the enrichment workshop. I paid attention the best I could, however, due to extenuating circumstances, I do not remember every thing that happened during the enrichment workshop.

I found the enrichment workshop to be somewhat interesting. It looked at the correlation between happiness and volunteering. Though it was interesting, I still have no immediate plans to go out and do more volunteering. It reminded me about the days in the past when I had more time to do whatever I wanted to (well I had time mainly because I never did homework or study -.-). I felt that the orator had very, very, very true point though. It is scientifically proven that giving away gift (both monetary gifts and physical gifts) or doing acts of kindness raise a person’s happiness.

Overall I found my first semester at Baruch to be somewhat easy. In comparison to the work I had to do in high school, I found the work I had to do (or lack thereof) to be much easier. Most of my assignments were readings and I only had a few major exams. Though I did have to study for many of my exams, it was easier than in high school when I had exams every other week.

My first semester at Baruch changed how I felt about school. Normally, I despised the thought of waking up at anytime to get to school, however, after my first semester, I began to not mind it as much. Meeting new people and making new friends really has helped me enjoy the college experience.

I won’t lie, however, the transition between high school and college was a little strange at first. I had a lot more time between my classes, and I began and ended at regular times. For example, I started school on Mondays and Wednesdays at ten twenty in the morning. On Tuesday and Thursday, I started school at eleven ten in the morning. I had more time between classes. I had to pay for everything, and I mean EVERYTHING.

I don’t really know what else to say so I’m going to post a picture about something.

A rock is a solid and hard to move particle that exists almost everywhere in today’s world. Though there may be many schools and colleges in this world, my experience at Baruch was as hard but stable as a rock could be. Once my semester began, I knew there was a lot of work ahead and I was very ready to face the workload. Though the workload may be hard and unavoidable in college, I would occasionally work hard to overcome homework and studying. College is definitely a new level of education and on a new work-level from anyone’s experience in high school. As a freshman entering college for the first time during my first  semester, I experienced a lot more opportunities and advanced work provided in my environment. I had to learn to reach out to those opportunities and overcome the amount of hard work given in all my classes. The first semester at Baruch was a rough one, just like this rock, but no matter how rough school work and college experience is, I overcame it all.  I realized studying was a very hard task when I started attending college because everything was more independent for each individual and time managing was a very important task. It was what I lacked the most in high school; knowing how to manage my time wisely and not procrastinating was the biggest issue I faced. However, as I attended my first semester at Baruch I realized that if I don’t work on my problems as soon as possible then I will have problems attending college and receiving the grades I want. I enjoyed the opportunities offered at Baruch, I have so far attended any meetings or workshops that interested me on my own and joined the Ascend Club. I have went out of my way as a freshman and tried to get myself involved. However, because of my willingness to participate in all these opportunities it has been hard for me to manage my school work wisely. I have put more work into reaching out and joining clubs or hearing about internship opportunities that I have lost some focus on doing my school work sometimes. It has all been a really rough experience, but I stand strong and stable about this college life I have and will work my way through like a rock.

What I got out of the enrichment program was that it is important to help others. One of the main focuses of Freshman Seminar was to complete the NYCares project. Although the project was mandatory, I really enjoyed it. Volunteering can be intimidating for many people, but it’s a great experience. I chose to volunteer at a soup kitchen with a group of friends. It was really intimidating when we first arrived but as the day progressed, we created many everlasting memories. The other volunteers were welcoming and the visitors were very nice. We listened to music as we volunteered and everyone enjoyed their time there because of the warm atmosphere.  Each of us served the food item we were in charge of and it was successful. When one of us fell behind in the lunch rush, others helped without even having to ask.

The supervisor of the soup kitchen emphasized that our job is to make the soup kitchen hospitable for the visitors because it we are there to help them. Many of the visitors experience ups and downs like a rollercoaster and a soup kitchen is the only thing that they can rely on. The soup kitchen is available to them every week and the food and serve is always consistent. It was great to see that they enjoyed the meal and some even returned for seconds. After this project, I realized how we can make a change in society. This relates to the workshop we attended because volunteering is more than just a school assignment. Helping others is very enjoyable and it feels great to be able to make a change in someone’s life. It inspired me to volunteer in my spare time with friends. It makes me want to do more for society. A smile when someone is feeling down, or a helping hand when someone is in a difficult situation will make a huge difference in their lives. Maybe we can inspire others to volunteer too. It reminds me of the impressive collectiveness I saw after Hurricane Sandy; so many people donated food and other essentials that they were turned away because they received more than their storage can hold.

I feel that we can make a huge impact by helping in any way we can. It can be even be as simple as holding the door for someone or offering someone a seat on a crowded bus. The possibilities to helping others are limitless and there is something that each person can do, no matter their age.

My first semester at Baruch is almost over and so much has happened in these few months. It was daunting to say the least. Adjusting to the new lifestyle at Baruch was stressful. Many of us freshman struggled to keep up with our hectic new schedules. If it wasn’t worrying over the next test, it was stressing to meet the deadline for a paper. Don’t even get me started on the colossal amount of homework. The picture above can express my feelings about my first impression of this semester at Baruch. College is a stressful experience that we must learn to handle and make the most of it. Yes, it’s true that college is tiring and will make us anxious by worrying about a grade or a test but there’s more to it than just that.

Baruch tries to help us relieve stress with many club activities to build friendships and other activities to get us involved. Do I regret this semester at Baruch? No, my friends and I worried over tests and studied together. It was great because we learned the material while we joked around which let us get to know each other more.

So called “The Baruch Enrichment” because I got enriched not only by the enrichment workshop, but from Baruch College as a whole.

My first semester at Baruch is so far a great experience. In the beginning of the semester, I remember feeling awkward for not knowing anyone. After a few weeks, I got to get along with more and more people. I like that people in college are more mature than people in high school, at least my high school. I was overwhelmed by a friend’s kindness once: he was so patient and explicit when tutoring me. When I was in high school, I used to not like helping people, but after getting help from that friend, I started changing my mind about this. I felt that altruistic personalities are really well-liked and respected. This ties to my reflection about the enrichment workshop, where Steven(the guy being interviewed) talked about caring others without asking for anything in return. I feel that most of my classmates are willing to sacrifice personal time to help each other, which influenced me greatly. I used to hate having study groups and didn’t like to help others that much because I feel like it’s a waste of time; but now I feel that helping others makes me feel happy as well. I actually liked the New York Cares project, although I had to wake up at 5 that day and stood in the cold for about 2 hours, it felt great to volunteer and help others.

First semester at Baruch not only changed my view towards classmates, but also my attitude towards education. Perhaps because of the environment at Baruch, the more mature people, and more interesting classes, I feel that I like to read more now than ever. Before college, I hated reading, especially books; now I actually found many of assigned readings interesting and would spend time in coffee shops, school library, train, or at home reading without getting distracted. I don’t see reading as a task anymore, but something to enjoy. That’s why I put a picture of tea and a book: it’s relaxing and enjoyable. I also found many homework assignments interesting to do and spend time doing them. I am not a nerd though. At the same time I learned to socialize better since I’m dealing with more mature people. Talking to mature peers is something I love to do because I learn a lot from these conversations.

Overall, first semester at Baruch was like an enrichment workshop its own. No one is really pushing me to do anything, but it is this freedom that allows me to manage my time more efficiently, spend more time to analyze course materials and their life applications, and discover/develop new interests. I enjoy going to school, for education and for more life experiences.