After nearly a week of planning and scheduling, my friend Alice and I were finally able to visit the American Museum of Natural History (AMNH). We were the first two people to exit our last class of the day when we were dismissed just so we could arrive at AMNH even a few minutes earlier. We both shared an interest in dinosaurs but before we could go and see the dinosaur exhibit, we had to do our lab field exercise. When we took a look at our field exercise, we saw that it was divided into three parts, each part for a different exhibit. For the first two parts, we had to go the Hall of Biodiversity and the Felix M. Warburg Hall of New York State Environment but we were allowed to go to any exhibit we preferred for our last part. There were around 25 questions in total we had to answer before we could go to our choice exhibit and we figured that it wouldn’t be long before we could see the dinosaurs. Twenty minutes later, two slightly stressed out girls sat down to continue their staring contest with the first question of the lab exercise. Needless to say, the lab report was a lot more challenging than we gave credit for it and by the time we got to our choice exhibit, my enthusiasm for seeing dinosaurs had diminished.
Even though my trip to AMNH wasn’t the best, as I felt stressed and confined to certain exhibits, I felt that this kind of trip was more meaningful than if I had free reign over which exhibits to go to and had no questions to answer. The reason I feel this way is that at the end of the day, I went to an exhibit that I was interested in and at the same time, I went to exhibits that I never would’ve visited. This meant that I was able to learn about things that I would’ve never learned about in a casual visit to the museum and at the same time was more forced to be more attentive to my surroundings. On a normal visit, I would probably ignore large blocks of text on the wall or any kind of text that was not within eye level. However, with the questions we had to answer for the lab exercise, I payed attention to these text and more often then not, found myself interested in the information within.
This past Friday I went to the Brooklyn Museum. I have been going to this museum for as long I can remember. Whenever I have an assignment to do it is my go to, but not just because it is easy to get to. Every time I visit there seems to be a new exhibit that I have not seen before. This time I walked right into the first exhibit that I saw, “The Legacy of Lynching.” The exhibit contained various examples of injustices that occurred in the past. I didn’t have time to look at everything so I skimmed the exhibit to see what stuck out. I stopped by a video of a man that was in jail for thirteen years. I had missed what the crime was but the important thing was that the man stayed in jail or that long only because the court had refuse to re-examine bullets that would hav been proven to not have been his and rendered him innocent. It was later determined that the man was innocent and the judge who had sentenced him was racist, but the man had already served the time. After that I walked around reading quotes and looking at pictures. The thing that caught my attention the most was a quote by Bryan Stevenson that said “Slavery didn’t end in 1865. It evolved.” This surprised me. I already knew that, my family had said the same thing before and I recognized it, but it surprised me to find a public institution echoing the same thing. You always. Hear people say similar things but you never really see a public institution or company taking the risk to say the same thing. Now I’m not saying that thing aren’t better. My life is pretty good and I don’t walk around worrying about getting lynched. That being said the difference between slavery in the past and today is just that today it is more mind game or chess game. For instance in th job world today you can’t be denied a job because off race, but a boss may sneakily give you extra work or not really pay attention to you for a promotion for some miscellaneous reason. The point is that silvery today means that you can’t be whipped but you damn well mentally and socially be beaten. The museum visit wasn’t really fun. It was just validating.
On October 5th, my friends and I decided to attend the Internship Seminar which is a part of Baruch’s Starr Career Development Center. Initially, I was very intrigued to attend this workshop because as an incoming freshman, I was not vert well-rounded on the topic of internships and the multitude of requirements that came with it. Personally, obtaining an internship has always been a pressing and overwhelming thought lingering in my mind, yet I had no idea where to start or how to possibly learn more about it until I went to this workshop. Hosted by Michael Kalish, I got the opportunity to learn everything about internships in great depth such as how to find internships opportunities, making the most of your internship, and the different types of internships available including the OCR internships and how Baruch offers credit for them. Despite the fact that internships credits are mainly given to second-term seniors and upper classmen, I was interested to find out about the Zero-Credit route since I never knew this could be available for freshman until today. Additionally, I was surprised yet excited when Michael Kalish briefly touched upon the topic of resumes and the importance of them as well as the main points that need to be included in them. Along with internships, I did not have a thorough understanding of everything that a resume entails and this workshop was the perfect way to learn about both the resources available at Baruch to assist us with the process of developing a resume and how to obtain an internship. The fact that Baruch has so many resources to assist us with resumes and internships such as mock interviews, Focus 2, and Vault, makes me feel that the process won’t be as overwhelming and I know I can always rely on the counseling center for any future questions/advice. After this seminar, I will definitely be utilizing as many resources as possible to ensure I’m prepared and confident going into internships and interviews.
