I went to the T.E.A.M Baruch information session with my friends. We were interested in this program and would like to know more about it. The funny thing was that when we try to get there, we did not know where the room 1-107 was. Yet we finally got into the room with the help of a security guard, there were already many people sitting right there and waiting.

The instructor started to introduce T.E.A.M Baruch with a question, “What is “T.E.A.M” stand for?” I remembered one time that Jessica asked this question in the freshman seminar class, it stands for “Together Everyone Achieves More”. There was student raised his hand and he got a shirt for this answer. Then the instructor kept introducing more about the T.E.A.M Baruch program. I know that this is a student leadership program and it helps students at Baruch to develop leadership skills, and it provides students jobs as peer mentors to lead others. This makes me very interested in it because we can learn skills with pay and contribute what we learned to others. When I was in high school, I was the President of the Student Government and I love to help people. I needed help when I was new in this country, and there were a lot of people helped me get through the most difficult time. Therefore, I would like to help others with all my passions and help them as much as I can. I think T.E.A.M Baruch is the best platform for me to help more people. Then, four mentors went up the stage and shared their experiences with us, about how they feel about T.E.A.M Baruch and how to be outstanding during the interview.

Yet I did not stay for the last minute for this information session because I had a tutoring schedule, I did learn a lot of things about T.E.A.M Baruch and I will be very happy if I could join it.

Today, on October 10, I attended the Writing Center Workshop where the topic was Controlling an Argument with Topic Sentences. Upon entering, I was expecting a huge room with dozens of students since it was a workshop. However, there were only about 8 of us in the room which was actually a positive thing since the consultant could have a one on one conversation with you. We were presented by an enthusiastic consultant who was luckily not just a boring old writing teacher which made the workshop more fun to work at. She gave us three paper that talked about model topic sentences and we had to break down the topic sentences and show why they are considered to be model. Next, on the other paper, we had to identify the type of topic sentences that was provided. I learned that the thesis they provided had not just one but three types of ways the author presents their thesis. We learned that the thesis helped analyze the rhetorical functions of figurative language + personification, that it identifies the effects of the reader, and that it complicates the reading by revealing a counterintuitive pattern. The consultant also gave us advice that any good essay on poetry should always show how the poem affects the reader. On the third paper, we had to find out how the previous topic sentences we worked on related to the thesis. After that, we had to explain how they relate to the other paragraphs. This workshop was really helpful in assisting me as I have always had trouble connecting or writing topic sentences that relate to the thesis. I would always either have a good thesis but bad topic sentences or a bad thesis with good topic sentences. I plan to go to more workshops in the writing center in the near future as I have to write an 8 page essay for my writing class even though I have never written more than 3 before.

I’ve never been great at writing essays, usually waiting till the last minute to write up a six page essay and never having a great flow throughout. After having to write an essay for my english class last week I realized that I definitely needed some help. So I headed myself to the writing center to learn and pick up new skills. At first, a couple peers and I got lost and ended up in the celebration outside on a balcony I had no idea we had. But we ended up finding the actual room and it was quite smaller than I anticipated.

We had to sign up with a sweet lady and then she allowed us to enter inside. There was only a handful of people attending, maybe eight to ten people. The professor conducting the workshop was really sweet and very passionate on making us understand how the thesis statement and topic sentences of future paragraphs have to tie together. She had us identify different uses of topic sentences and used an idea (?) to grasp how important a topic sentence may be. She said a typical topic sentence written by a student is like velcro, easily ripped off, but a topic sentence should be like a needle and thread, holding everything together much strongly.

The professor had us read an essay and then use highlighters to highlight different topic sentences and their correlating mention in the thesis statement. Afterwards, she had us fill in a chart on how the topic sentence tied with the thesis statement and then how the topic sentence tied to the previous and upcoming paragraphs. Overall, I had an excellent time attending the workshop and I definitely picked up many new tricks,tips and new ideas for any upcoming essays in the nearby distant future.

I went to the club fair on the 28th with Nicole and Karen and I thought it would be fun to meet new people. I am not really an outgoing person so I thought it would be nice to have people initiate conversation. I joined UCLA, which is the United Chinese Language Association. I thought that it would be fun to become more in touch with the Chinese side of me than I already am. I don’t know if that’s possible but we’ll see. Everyone at the club fair was very energetic and friendly. There was less free food than I expected but that’s ok because it was still fun. There was a lot of candy and people handing out free stuff. And the music they played was pretty good. It was kind of like a little party. We just walked around the gym a couple of times just so that we wouldn’t miss any potentially perfect club but I didn’t find one. Most clubs members were more interested in talking to each other than talking to new potential members. But whatever. I might start want to start my own club because I didn’t really find any clubs that I was really interested in. I think it was hard to find a club because I didn’t have a passion for any of the things that were there. I might start a volleyball club because I love the sport but don’t love it enough to be committed to the team at school. My life revolved around volleyball for four years in high school and I wanted to branch off and do something different but I miss it too much. School is also really hard to adjust to. I’m not used to having to do schoolwork but hopefully I’ll find a club next semester.

When I was trying to figure out how to spend my time during club hours one day, I came upon a flyer for study abroad. I was very interested in this even and asked a fellow classmate if they wanted to come with me. As soon as we entered the gym, we were amazed at all the stands representing different countries that were there. As we walked around taking brochure for all kinds of different countries, we realized how awesome it would be to spend a semester overseas. Having already been to Europe and traveling to several countries, I can definitely say that I’d love to go back. The places that piqued my interest were Denmark, London, Korea, and Sweden. The fact that as a student you have the opportunity to submerge yourself into different cultures and travel is a chance one shouldn’t pass up. Of course, it does come down to the money factor. However, there were a few stands that went into great detail about how a student can apply for scholarships and essentially have their time abroad paid for! I will definitely keep my options open during my time in college to see if going abroad is the right decision for me. I know that Carmine was super excited about London because he didn’t have to pick up another language. And I would have to agree entirely. As cool as it is in the other countries, the language barrier can get quite frustrating, especially if you travel and accidentally get lost in a local village devoid of tourists. Trust me, you don’t want to end up in that scenario, it took forever to find my way back to the train station with a dead phone! I highly encourage my fellow classmates to look into the study abroad program for junior or senior year. I think sophomore year might be a little too early to get into study abroad and truly appreciate it.

Today I decided to attend the Building Your Brand: The Personal Pitch Career Workshop. For starters, I’ve always been a person interested in improving myself and learning any type of new information that can help my career. This workshop seemed like a great opportunity to do just that: inform me on how I can improve to benefit my interview experiences.

The workshop began with a general discussion on what a personal pitch is, and what it includes. After giving our opinions, we proceeded to watch a video example of several people delivering their personal pitches twice; once in the “bad” or “incorrect” fashion, and the other in the “good” or “correct” way. This video alone was extremely helpful to me, and surely, the rest of the group, as it helped us visualize good and bad aspects of delivering a personal pitch.

A good pitch, for example, includes formal speaking and proper body language. It details strengths about yourself, work and academic experiences relevant to the field you are interviewing for, and relevant personality traits. A bad pitch includes speaking informally, acting nonchalantly, and having little information about yourself, or information that is irrelevant to what field you are applying for.

After watching the video and further detailing what a personal pitch was, we began writing our own versions of personal pitches, mainly brainstorming main points to focus on, and presenting it to partners. I especially enjoyed this, because it allows me to contemplate what I want to include in my pitch, and presenting it to our partners helps receive positive feedback on what was good and what needs improvement. It also served as an “ice breaker” to interact with our peers.

This was an overall great experience, and one of the more memorable and helpful ones I’ve had at Baruch so far. I look forward to attending similar workshops in the future, and improving my own personal brand.

Personally, I do not like museums and I don’t think that MOMA changed that but I definitely do see them in a different light. The first few galleries were annoying to me and I already wanted to leave. I was super confused as to how people viewed the most random things as art. Louise Bourgeois had some really weird sculptures and paintings, there was one of a huge spider on a cage which was the sculpture and squiggled lines with rocks which was a painting. None of it made sense to me and I refused to look at this stuff as art. Next, we went to another gallery which was much more intriguing. The paintings had much more detail and actually jumped out at me, like it was alive. But then my hopes were dropped again when we went to the next gallery and there were crushed automobile parts all put together which was considered to be art. At this point, I was ready to give up but I decided to give one more gallery a chance and it changed the way I would view and appreciate art. This is where all the big names came out. I was standing in front of Starry Night by Vincent van Gogh and the Claude Monet painting called Water Lilies. These two pieces blew my mind. It was simple yet detailed and beautiful. They had a certain vibe, like these artists emitted something greater to me than the other less famous artists in the museum. It was crazy when I was standing in front of Starry Night, it was like wow, this is 100 million dollars right here. My favorite paintings however were by Henri Rousseau called “The Dream” and “The Sleeping Gypsy.” These paintings had animals in them which is probably why I liked them more than the other ones but they were just beautiful pieces.

A couple of weeks ago I attended the Study abroad fair with my classmate Vince. We went around to all of the tables that represented different countries. Each represented country had a study abroad program that seemed very exciting. I spoke to the representative for India, France, England, Spain, Belgium, Italy, Greece and Scotland. I was mostly curious about the France, Italy and Greece programs but none of them compared to the program offered in England. The representative I talked to was a student from Baruch who studied in England for her whole junior year. She claimed that it was the best time of her life, and everyone there loves an English accent. I’ve always wanted to go to Europe and visit all of these countries but what was so intriguing about England especially was the price and not having to learn another language. All of the study abroad programs were any between ten thousand to fifteen thousand dollars for a semester away. However, unlike all of the other programs, the England program was approximately the same price, but according to the representative, that price covered the cost of an entire year. After talking to all of the people representing the countries I went over to the other side of the gym where I talked to a woman who explained to me a course provided by Baruch that is provided for those who are interested in talking a semester or two abroad. It can be taken before or after going away. Then another woman proceeded to explain to me how there are scholarships and funds provided for the students attempting to follow through with this program. This opportunity is very exciting to me but I am unsure about whether or not I will follow through with this. It is very tempting as it seems so exciting but is still expensive.