Last week I attended a majors and minors fair held during club hours at the vertical campus. I went with a friend who was also a business major to help browse and decide on a minor. The fair was huge and contained many interesting topics. This helped expand my view on subjects i hadn’t considered before. I would like to pursue a minor in mathematics but i had no idea how many variations there were or different paths i could choose. the fair didn’t help me come to an exact decision on what i want to minor in but it help me branch out from business.

Austin Budhram
Ad Hoc Career Workshop

For my career workshop, I decided to attend a workshop for Ad-Hoc majors several weeks ago. Although I’m currently a Computer Information Systems (CIS) major, I’m open to other potential majors in the business field. As a result, I saw Ah-Hoc as a way to show that I’m able to “create” my own major if I’d want to. If I don’t find something that appeals me, I’ll know that I have the flexibility to create a major that appeals to me. After the workshop leader gave us a few examples of previous Ad Hoc majors created, I had a general understanding of the requirements of such a major. Even though we were “free” to create our own major, they had to be explained, which is reasonable. Baruch has to ensure our majors aren’t a “joke”, so having us explain our reasoning allows us to gain an insight on our major, field, and the possible career it leads to. We then had several Ad Hoc major students speak on their “created” majors, ranging from science and business to music and theatre. Personally, if I were to “create” my own major later down the road, I would create a major that encompasses IT, but involves mainly the business aspect of it. Since today’s society is mainly based around the ever growing technology, internet technology (IT) poses very promising job opportunities. In addition, I learned the importance of a resume, which is an individual’s first impression to a potential employer. All in all, my visit to the Ad Hoc workshop several weeks ago showed me the importance of building a strong foundation now, in order to build upon it in the future. This long term planning will hopefully lead to success in the future. All in all, I enjoyed this Ad Hoc workshop and hope to attend more career workshops on the future (preferably resume).

My friends and I attended the General Interest Meeting for this club called “Alpha Kappa Psi,” in the very beginning of the school year. It’s a business fraternity and going to this general interest meeting was interesting because it was actually a fraternity that dealt with business related things and not parties. During this general interest meeting, I was able to listen to the members’ experiences in being a part of the club and how it changed their perspectives in business. Additionally, they all travel together as a group which sounded really fun and seeing all the pictures they took together was like they were a whole, big family.

Aside from all the traveling, this club seems really serious in what they do. They talked about how the club works with some big companies and give internships to those who qualify as well as making connections with many other big companies like J.P. Morgan.

For now, I don’t think I’ll join this club as it does seem a bit too much to handle, especially since I just started college and won’t be able to handle the workload from both school work and club work at the same time. Although, it was a nice experience to see that this was one of many different clubs Baruch offered.

Last week, I attended a CUNY BA workshop. CUNY BA is a program within the CUNY system that allows students to design their own unique majors. Its like Ad-Hoc in that you would be creating something unique for yourself, but different in terms of what the student would be open to. With Ad-Hoc, the student would only have access to classes in his or her college. However, if one were pursuing a CUNY BA, then the entire CUNY campus would be open to choose from. I was interested in this program at first because it was recommended to me because of my indecisiveness as to what I was interested in doing. I know I have time to think about this type of stuff, but the earlier the better, no?

I attended the meeting with one of my friends who was also interested in the program. When we went in I noticed that a lot of the people in there were much older than we are. It made me feel all the more unsure. However, it seemed like the people there were in the same spot as us; not having what they needed and needing more options.

I learned in the meeting that with CUNY BA, one could study virtually anything. They gave me a list of sample ‘majors’ (they call them concentrations, but it means the same thing), and it surprised me to see the uniqueness of what people were able to come up with. I had some worries about the program as well, about how the degree itself would be perceived as when it came to searching for jobs. I was rest assured that CUNY BA degrees are seen no differently than the standard degree. Overall, I was glad I went to this meeting because I know now that there’s a whole world of options out there for me. While it does make things a little more daunting to approach, its nice to know that there’s more.

For my academic blog post, I went to the Baruch Study Abroad Fair to learn about how to study abroad at Baruch. Before I entered college, I dreamed about study abroad in European countries, such as the United Kingdom, and Asian countries, such as South Korea. I would like to put myself in a different environment for five months and learn something new about a country and discover my new potentials. Plus, I didn’t study in the United States for all my life, I have study experience in another country as well. To me, study in the U.S. was like “study abroad” to me when I first arrived in the U.S. When I entered the gym where Baruch hosted the event, I saw schools from all around the world, and of course, I went to the desks of countries I’m familiar with. I had the most interest in study abroad in South Korea since I’m a huge lover of Korean pop music. The school that partners with Baruch College for study abroad is Yonsei University. Yonsei University itself is a very highly-ranked school in South Korea. I learned from the staff that if I go there, I will be enrolled by a program called Yonsei University Program for Foreigners, where international undergraduate students are provided with the opportunity to learn Korean language and experience Korean culture. I wouldn’t need to be afraid of not being proficient in Korean since courses there are taught in English. Baruch’s GPA requirement for study abroad is 2.75. Sometimes one receives credits from Baruch for the courses taken while study abroad, sometimes not, depending on the contents of the courses. Financial aids can be applied to study abroad classes. There are also various scholarship programs that can help students finance their study abroad trips. From this event, I have learned a lot about study abroad and I will keep considering study abroad as an option for me by the time I reach junior or senior year.

I attended Baruch Voices the other day casually. I honestly didn’t know what I was going to one of my friends just told me to follow him. The room was pretty crowded with first year students all excited to see their classmates share their monologues. My friend dragged me with him because he said the kid that won from his class had a hilarious monologue and I couldn’t miss it. When we arrived, there were no more seats left. Waves of students were coming and going as each presenter went on and off the stage. The atmosphere was nice and comfortable everyone was very respectful of every kid presenting. This was a nice small social event that allowed lots of kids to express themselves through their monologues. I didn’t know many of the kids, but I did recognize a few faces. It’s interesting to think about because these are all kids who just started their college journey like myself. We’re all the class of 2021. The monologues were all very authentic and different. Lots of these kids were very creative. One of my favorites was this one monologue where the kid explained a SpongeBob scene from the perspective of Squidward. Other kids shared very personal experiences about who they were and how they felt about school. Another one that stood out to me was this rap song this kid made. They sadly couldn’t get the beat up, so he rapped it acapella. He had everyone in the room listening closely and hyping him up. The experience was better than what I expected. I was amazed by the creativity and the support kids had for their classmates. Baruch creates a very comfortable environment for students and this was recognized at this event. I hope to attend more events like this one.

shawn tatynskiy

This week I was able to attend a Hillel event which is an organization of jewish students that is led by a rabbi and many guests are brought in to share their experiences as a jew. This week the club had invited a holocaust survivor to speak about her experiences during the second world war. The stories she told greatly resonated with me and many of the people attending because I have family members that either lost their lives or lived through the holocaust. people around we were also clearly moved by her experiences because they probably have relatives who lived through this terrible time as well. The topic of her stories, the holocaust, is a monumental event effecting countless groups of people but was especially significant for people of the jewish faith. Because of the holocaust many of us have lost family and millions of other jews around the world experienced the same tragedy we did. While I wasn’t alive at the time of the holocaust the conditions and hardships faced by the jewish people during this time were very vivid in my imagination. This club not is very enjoyable because we have the opportunity to learn the history of people of the same religion and culture. We are able to find out how and why certain practices were created and what their purpose is. The club also allows members to learn and grow from the experiences of the people that come in to give a presentation. By hearing the various struggles and experiences they had throughout their life as a jew we are able to apply their advice into our own lives and possibly learn from their examples. Overall I felt very welcome in this club as everyone was very kind and polite and they even offer free pizza during their proceedings. I highly recommend anyone to join this club, weather jewish or not, because of the valuable lessons about life and jewish history that can be obtained through this organization.

For my second blog post I decided to got to the Museum of Mathematics. The main reason I chose this museum was because it was very close to Baruch, being only a 5 minute walk away. Being that math has always been my achilles heal in school I wasn’t expecting to have a good time. As I walked in to the museum I was expecting my visit to be free but as it turns out, the school ID isn’t as magical as it seems as I still had to shell out 11 dollars. At this point I was a bit upset because not only was I somewhere I didn’t really want to be but I also had to pay to be there. I began to look around at the various exhibits in the museum and realized that this museum had two floors and over 20 exhibits. The first exhibit on my right was an exhibit about number lines. My brain instantly thought, “skip” but I decided to wander in just in case there was something worth seeing. As it turns out the exhibit explained in simplicity exactly what number lines are and what their practical life application is. The next exhibit I looked at was actually pretty cool. Basically every visitor can design their own shape virtually, and if the shape is unique enough, it is selected to be 3d printed and put on display. My design was an 18 sided die but unfortunately it wasn’t selected to be displayed. After I finished my attempt at a cool shape I realized that I had been working on it for almost an hour and that it was time for me to leave. I guess I kind of had fun in the end, but I still wouldn’t go back.