The leadership workshop taught us what it really meant to be a leader.  It talked about influential leaders in the world, how they started and what they created.  They even brought in some local leaders from Baruch’s various clubs and organizations.  The workshop left us with some variable information on how we can take charge and be somebody, and I’m sure it would have given me valuable life lessons that I would always cherish if I had actually paid attention.

Often times it is difficult to integrate into something new whether that be making the transition from high school to college or moving to a new neighborhood, and it can often times be very helpful to have someone assist you in that transition. This is essentially the driving idea behind Freshmen Seminar, and although the intentions behind Freshmen seminar seemed to be good, the program itself was very hit and miss. On one end when it came to choosing classes and building a schedule for next semester, I personally found Fro to be very helpful when it came to assisting me in helping decide what classes to take and without it I would just be lost. On the other hand, when it came to community building, i felt like fro missed the mark. I am not saying that there isn’t any sense of community whatsoever; quite the contrary- having most of our classes, such as Fro, together and being placed into an LC did help to foster a sense of community to the extent that friendships were made and at the very least we all know, or should know, each others names. What I am saying, however, is that some of the projects such as working together on blogs and doing community service seemed to miss the mark when it came to team building. For the blogs, in theory, we should have worked together to accomplish a common goal but in practice, from my experience at least, we just worked separately on the blogs 30 minutes before the  class they were do. Also, the community service- and this isn’t a complaint to having to do community service by any means (i do believe in giving back to the community)- seemed to miss the mark of building us as a community. The entire LC didn’t work on the same project and we only had to do it once;if anything, the community service was good in the sense that we were able to give back  but ultimately failed because not everyone was in collaboration and was for such a short period of time that it seems forgettable.

When i think of the term “leadership” certain phrases come to mind- loyalty, duty, respect, selfless service, Honor, Integrity, and Personal Courage. When i think of the term “leadership”, i think of great military generals such as George Washington who were able to not only lead a group to achieve a certain goal but through their dedication were able to exceed their own limits and push their subordinates to do the same. When i think of the term “leadership,” i think of powerful organizations such as the Army, Navy, Marines, and Air Force. When i think of the term “leadership,” I most certainly do not think of that workshop we went to! The “leadership” workshop, if it can even be called that, seemed to be nothing more then a diluted club fair. The main speaker seemed to be way to jittery and to a certain extent nervous and almost no one seemed to be paying attention. To be perfectly honest, that “leadership” workshop needed better leadership. But i did take something away from the workshop. When the student leaders spoke to us and told us their stories it pushed me more towards joining a club. I had been on the edge of joining a club for quite some time now but listening to the leaders did convince me more to perhaps join one in the next semester. Besides that, the leadership workshop really didn’t have any other significant impact on me.

Last Thursday we went to the Reuben Museum, which is dedicated entirely to showing off Buddhism and educating the general public about it. I learned some very interesting things which I had not known, although Buddhism had been  covered within my high school world history curriculum. One of the most interesting things which I learned was that within Buddhism’s path to enlightenment there are several approaches. There are some which are done by completely removing yourself from anything that affects you, living a simple life, and removing yourself from pleasure and pain. However, one of the things which I learned from Namit was that the Buddhists considered that there were other worldly approaches to finding enlightenment, such as having an immense amount of earthly pleasure. This at the very least surprised me, and made me want to look more into some of the other things that the Buddhist thought of. Another very interesting thing was the chart that described the different hand symbols used in paintings and sculptures of Buddhist figures. I had never made the connections, and had thought that some figures just had a traditional look, but it turned out that the same figure might be portrayed with different hand symbols. Something I had never thought of.