Hey guys, sorry for the late post, exams and stuff got my schedule packed up, but now that they’re mostly over I can finally get backed to my normal schedule. So on Tuesday, my friend Owais and I went to a Baruch theatre production of the play Castle II, as an assignment for our theatre class. We were told it would be extra credit, and supplement what we’re learning in class, so after waiting at school for two hours, we finally entered the school trying to find the Englemen recital hall. We got lost of course, what do you expect out of freshmen? but after finding the very weird location for the elevator into the basement, we entered. The play really wasn’t anything that I could have expected, we had to wait like 25 minutes before they let us in which sucked because the lobby was packed and I was tired. But we finally got in, and it got real emotional real fast. The director of the play, who actually taught at Baruch gave a brief introduction, and it was from there that I learned he actually forced his classes to go, unlike our teacher. Anyways the play started and it essentially was four ex prison inmates who were telling the story of how they had gotten into prison, each of them had been arrested multiple times, and how they eventually joined the castle program, which is rehabilitation and reintegration convicts into society. Each person had their unique back story and they each came from very distinct, different walks of life. Two were from the Bronx, one from Long Island, and one from Queens. There were two African American men, one latino, and one Latina, I think that’s meant to show that anybody can make mistakes, and that people shouldn’t be prejudiced. The play was really stripped down, it was essentially four people sitting in chairs, seen in the back of my picture, with stands and microphones. I really liked the performance, it was really emotional and it provided a really deep insight that I had never really considered before. I’m really happy i got to go to this event, but the one thing i would change is that owais slept through like half of the thing and we were kinda sitting in the front so i was associated with the kid who slept during a play. Thanks Owais. 
Month: October 2017
Student Life: MSA
Today I attended an event held by the Baruch Muslim Student Association during club hours. Joining a student organization presents many opportunities to learn more about yourself, your goals, and your strengths. You can learn from how other students handle certain situations and test your current knowledge. You can also find out what you’re good at, whether that’s multitasking, staying organized, generating ideas, or serving others. This self-awareness will be beneficial in your future career. You’ll also learn how to engage with diverse groups of people. The event was a spiritual one about the importance of prayer and meditation. It was a really informative and refreshing event because in our current materialistic and fast paced society that we are a part of today we tend to forget the importance of spirituality and connecting with our faith or souls. There was also some tasty food and great company. It was a great event and was a great way to relieve stress after my exams and assignments that I have had in the last few days. 
Writing Workshop
On October the tenth I went to writing workshop which began at twelve thirty during club hours. It took place in a small room, with very few people. The writing workshop really centered around topic sentences, and introductions. In the beginning we were just given a sheet of topic sentences as we read each one we had to guess what the rest of the paragraph would be about. After that we actually read excerpts from stories such as George Orwell’s 1984. I sort of choose this activity at the last minute, There was an actual English teacher there, and then the writing workshop only had about nine students there. They seemed to be having writing activities going on all day. The workshop was on the eight floor, at first I went to the wrong room. I went onto a terrace that was being used for some Jewish holiday that is going on this week, I had at first mistaken it for the writing seminar because they were right next to each other. I honestly felt that the writing seminar was a little boring, and maybe that is just because I do not really like to write. I do not think I will be going to another one of these seminars unless I really was in need of help. I had a few friends of mine there with me so I guess that helps. I actually had only found out about the writing workshop earlier that day, there was a link to it on my student email account. I think in the future instead of going to writing workshops I will end up going to math workshops or tutoring sessions, because math is much harder than English so it deserves more time. That is about it, altogether the writing workshop was just ok.
fro assignment (career workshop)
Your resume is your first impression. A first impression is very important as it determines how interested the employer will be or taking into account their consideration to invest their time into you. On September 14th, I went to the career workshop where they talked about resume building and they taught me why i was so important. Having a good resume has the sole purpose of convincing the employer in a matter of seconds that you are unique and should be interviewed. Thus creating the importance of taking the time to put in effort into your essay. First off when writing your resume your first most highlighted points of the resume must be your best achievements, your best skills, and your credibility and background, but NOT A DETAILED essay about your life. It is very important to keep the same format and keep everything consistent including the grammar, and the spelling. Make sure that all the information you write down is LEGIT, as if the employer catches you that could cost you a big job opportunity. One of the biggest things in a resume is having a cover letter. During the presentation they mentioned that a cover letter is huge in getting the interest and attention of the employer. A cover letter is the first part of the impression where it is a one page statement that shows the SKILLS that would benefit in a particular interest in a particular field/position and it will propel your chances of getting it, so its good to start out with the skills you think fit the job so the employer sees value, and how good of an employer you will be and your the perfect match for them, and the position youre applying for. Before printing out your resume they stressed that it was very important to have multiple people proof read your resume to catch any errors either with grammar or spelling or even the little things such as MARGINS and consistency, this one little mistake can cost your essay to be thrown out immediately. Overall this workshop was very informative and id recommend to everyone!
Writing Workshop
On October 10 I went to a writing workshop. I was a little late but I barely missed anything. I went with a couple friends, to hopefully make it more bearable. But I was pleasantly surprised, it was very bearable. The class was fairly empty, it was my friends and 3 other people. The teacher was very nice and she was very good at teaching her subject. She was an English teacher teaching a workshop on topic sentences of essays. First, we were given model sentences and we were told to examine the sentences and told to write the topic sentence functions. Obviously, i was a bit clueless but after a couple, I started getting a hang of it. After sharing around the class a bit we moved on to the next sheet which was a example of an essay. The essay was about a story called “A Hanging” by George Orwell. George Orwell’s story had to do with how people treat other people like savages. The essay that was written was masterfully written and we tried to analyze every piece of it. At first, we looked at it in base value. Then we pulled out some highlighters and we got to work. We had to split up the highlighters into 3 different colors. Pink was the color we used to analyze figurative language. The blue was used to find contrasting points in the story. And the Green was used to highlight the way the story made the reader feel. I had a lot of trouble with this, but it wasn’t anything crazy hard. finally, we started to link all the paragraphs between eachother. We found linking sentences and found common themes amongst each essay. In general, I learned a lot about essay writing. The class ended with what we took away from the class. I took away how to effectively write an essay topic question. In general, it was a good experience.
WORKSHOP CLASS ROOM
Thesis Statement Workshop
I chose to attend this academic workshop for three reasons. Number one, because it was required for the homework. Number two because it was available during one of the rare blocks of free time that I have during the week. Number three, it just so happened that I had an essay due the next day and thought it would be at least a little helpful. When I arrived at the writing center I took my seat along with maybe eight or nine other people. The majority of them were older than me anyway and, as I naturally prefer not to draw much attention to myself, I chose to stay in a corner. them The instructor handed out packets and using the examples they contained, walked us all through the basics of a good Thesis statement. I honestly had learned most of what she said before, but one thing she mentioned that I had never thought of before was the importance of the verbs you choose in your introduction and thesis. She also explained the difference between an explanatory and an argumentative thesis and the different effects they can have on your essay depending on the angle you are arguing. We went on to view different example statements and were asked to analyze them and improve them. I surprised even myself during the exercise by speaking up and actually answering some questions which I try not to do in most situations. However, the fact that I sometimes enjoy writing and tend to be decent at it may have influenced that decision. It also helped that half of the people there had chosen to leave in the middle of it so I only had to open my mouth in front of four people. Overall I did not really like or dislike the experience. The instructor did not use any sort of presentation and there was no banner anywhere in the room. Half of the attendees left at the halfway mark and the rest scurried away the second it was over so I decided that a selfie of me in basically a classroom would not serve as very good proof that I was there. Therefore I have opted for a screenshot of the confirmation e-mail.
Blog Post #2 Student Life
Whenever I have any sort of break from class I usually would stay in the game room. As others may seem the game room to be boring and unattractive and wayyyyy to many people. The game room fills up a lot during the usual club hours but slowly die down. I spend my time in the game room playing pool, as I’ve been told that golf and pool are both good games to know how to play for business and negotiations. Ever since I started playing which was since the week after class started I’ve just been there all the time. I got to meet a lot of new people like other freshman who take similar classes to me and people who are sophomores and juniors. This made me interact with many different people in the school which honestly help me get out of my shy persona with strangers whom I know nothing about. Not only meeting new people is a perk from being in the game room but also getting to know how other people play and applying it to your own twist of the game. I’ve honestly been getting better and better at pool the more I play it and the more I see other people’s techniques. It’s honestly been a great door to getting to know more people in the freshman cohort and not only those in my classes. With this I feel like I’m getting used to the vibe this school gives and also the people in this school. The game room was the best thing I have learned about since my first day of classes here and it has made me feel like I can slowly but surely get into student life at the school and be part of Baruch in general and take advantage of what the school has to offer
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Nicole Topchishvili Student Life Blog Post #2
On Thursday, September 28, 2017, Christina, Karen and I attended the club fair in the gymnasium during club hours. The goal of this endeavor was to gain a better understanding of all the different clubs Baruch had to offer, to meet some new people and explore our options to get more into student life in the near future. As a freshman, I definitely think it’s important to know that i have options and places to go to get away from the academic stress. I thrive best around people who share the same interests as me, and/or are the same type of person that I am. I am generally pretty shy, but once you get to know me, I am pretty outgoing and fun to be around. I was hoping that more people would try to get our attention as we walked through the gym that day, but only one club reached out to get us over to their table, and that was the archery club. I don’t have any interest in archery, so I guess that was kind of a bummer. Getting free stuff was cool, as always, and the energy and music was really great. The atmosphere was electric. However, the more we walked around, the more I realized their wasn’t really a club I could see myself being a good fit in. Sensing my disappointment, Christina suggested I look into potentially starting my own club, which I think could be a great idea, and a great way to further dive into really getting involved here during my time as a Baruch Bearcat. College goes by quicker than one might think, and I truly believe that life is too short to stick to the bare minimum. I want to make my time here memorable, and starting a club about something i’m passionate about might just be the way to make that happen.
Writing Workshop (Academic)
Today, I went to visit Baruch’s writing workshop on the 8th floor of the Newman Vertical Campus. To even be admitted into the workshop, you had to have scheduled an appointment prior to attending. At 12:30 PM, the workshop began with a teacher entering the room. Surprisingly, not that many students had attended, only about 8 or 9 students total attended the workshop. After all of our introductions, we moved onto the workshop’s main topic for the day, which was topic sentences for an essay. Our teacher began by writing an opening paragraph onto the board, which we had to analyze. We were initially given a page that contained a few example topic sentences to examine, analyze, and explain. After learning and demonstrating the process of writing, reading, and understanding topic sentences, we went on to analyze an essay written about a George Orwell story called “A Hanging”, which is about a man who is in prison that will soon be hung for unknown reasons. The essay written about it demonstrates the use of topic sentences, with each paragraph stating a part of a reason for why Orwell wrote a story about inhumane prison keepers while noting Orwell himself does not seem to disallow or argue against it, but is seemingly for the idea of cruel punishment and execution. We had to analyze the essay’s use of topic sentence and some of the distinctions used in those topic sentences, such as personification, and invocation of reader sympathy or empathy. Our teacher had given us a great amount of help on the subject matters and because of a small meeting size, we could have individual meetings and conversations. She came around to check on how we were doing frequently to make sure we understood the subject, and allowed for a great atmosphere overall. The workshop itself was very informative and I may go again one day to improve my writing skills. 
Owais Malik at a Starr Career Development Center
On October 5th, I went to the HSBC Career Development workshop. To get inside the event, we had to be dressed professionally. When I was surprised to find that a quite a few people had come for the event itself. I sat down and the even started with them giving an introduction of HSBC. To my surprise, I realized how important it was to find a good internship because throughout the event they mentioned that a lot of the people that came for an internship actually got offers for a job there. As someone that is looking at Finance as an intended major, that was a really important for me to find out at such an early start. As the event continued, another thing that the presenters made clear was the diverse roles that are available for a person that is looking for a job in a bank. One statistic they showed us were the different roles that people played in the bank. Then as the presenters from the bank came on the stage, they helped us to realize the importance of communications. How these people have to communicate with people from all over the world to help secure both deals and to help understand the overseas market. Also how if people in the bank had questions about policies of the bank in a different country, they had the ability to contact others. The most important thing that they stated about the internship was that they were looking for someone that could do all the work correctly. The interns would work with other employees all the time. So if the intern is able to make him/herself seem like a valuable person, then there is a high chance that they will get an offer to join the company. When the even came to an end, the person in charge that talked to us said that the important part was necessarily the information, but the networking opportunity that these people are given at the end of the event. Now that I understand the importance of these events and internship, I will look forward to these events.
(Proof in Notebook with a signature)