Sameera Chowdhury – Spoon University

For Student Life, I attended the club Spoon University. It’s essentially a food club, where there are photographers, videographers, and writers who look for places for students to eat intelligently. Many colleges have a Spoon University club, and these clubs come together to create a larger community. When they say for students to eat intelligently, they don’t mean for students to eat healthily, but more wise in terms of money and location. I didn’t exactly know whether I would enjoy the club, but I ended up really enjoying myself. Initially, it started off a bit awkwardly since no one knew each other, but we quickly got acquainted as we started off the club with a game. We played Head’s Up, but food edition. Everyone who guessed their food correctly would get a free chips and guac/burrito coupon. I was really nervous going up there because with my luck, I would be the one person who wouldn’t be able to guess their food correctly. However, in the end, everyone guessed their food correctly and got a free coupon. Everyone was very friendly and helped each other guess correctly. It helped me adjust to Baruch life because it made me feel apart of a community. This club showed me the wide range of clubs Baruch has to offer and the different communities I can be apart of. I am thinking about possibly joining the photography and videographer committees. I’m not too well versed in making videos, and this would give me an opportunity to learn and try something new. I’m really excited to possibility pick up a new skill. It also allowed me to socialize with different people that I wouldn’t have met or seen otherwise. To add to this, there was free pizza!

Jessica Chen, Accounting Society

This time for the blog and myself, I decided to go to some club general interest meetings and see if any of them intrigued me. On August 24, the day of Convocation day, as I was waiting on line to get a free smoothie drink, a guy comes up to my friend and I, and asked what our majors were. We both answered accounting and coincidentally enough, he was from the Accounting Society Club. He told us to sign up for newsletters and updated information on the club, so when it was time they had their first general interest meeting, my friend and I went. 

When we first walked in, they provided us with a game where there were zoomed in pictures and we had to guess what the thing was based on the close up and the winning team in the end gets a goodie bag. (We didn’t win, but we were pretty close). In the meeting, they provided us with information on what the club is. The club has many official members ranging from marketing, to organizing the club. Each year they have professionals from big companies or corporations come to the school and have either a group or one on one interview. There are sessions where they will be teaching us how to put together a resume that is worth reading and throughout the year, it will be sessions teaching us about interviews, types of accounting corporations, things we should or shouldn’t do, and etc. One thing that I took away was the fact that when applying for a job especially in Accounting, it is best to have volunteer experience because firms want to see that we are also contributing to the society, and sometimes even in workplaces, they will let their employees take a day off and volunteer at an event. I am definitely interested in the club since it is helpful for my future career, but I have decided to wait until I am completely settled on wanting to become an accountant to join the club. 

Enrique Escobar 1st Blog Post

Hello everyone! Hope you are all enjoying the start to a new school year. One day as I was walking up to the 2nd floor, I was a sign showing all the LatinX events for heritage month. This caught my eye because it looked fun and because I knew I wanted to celebrate my culture with my peers. I decided to tell my friends to come with me to the opening ceremony and to the LatinX family feud. During the opening ceremony, they had plenty of activities in the lobby. The first thing they had was a table set up with tasty empanadas which were really good. They had other types of food there, but I couldn’t even go because of the long lines. Then they had a bunch of silly games we could play for prizes. During the entire event, they had Baruch radio playing a bunch of popular Spanish artists lie Romeo Santos and Bad Bunny. People ended up forming a circle in the middle for people to go in and dance. On the outside we all still danced even though my friends had no idea what they were dancing to. The whole event really made me proud to be part of such a rich culture.

The opening ceremony was organized well and made all the student life events look like they are worth my tuition dollars. Because of such an event, I’ve already went to the LatinX Family Feud with my friends which was also really fun. I also attended the LatinX meet & greet for a little bit as part of the Success Network program. I also plan on going to the other events like “let’s eat” and the “blind spot” performance. All of these events made me feel part of the Baruch community despite it being a commuter school.

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Afnan Shariff Finance and Economics Society

On September 7th, I had the chance to attend the Finance and Economics Society (FES) general interest meeting. My intended major is Finance, so this club was definitely a right fit to check out. What surprised me was the amount of people that showed up to the meeting, with the room being extremely crowded. The leader of the club, Verina, greeted us and we were given a plethora of information. We were given insight on what the club was; it consisted of finance/economics major hopefuls trying to make it into the finance world, and engaging in activities relevant to their future. This club had a variety of programs, such as an investment program and a mentorship program. The mentorship program grabbed my attention as there are mentors who take on mentees and help them with everything related to their major, providing advice, and helping them prepare for the future to come. However, it’s highly selective. The GIM moved to us conducting a team building activity, which consisted of the groups to construct the tallest tower made from spaghetti, a marshmallow and tape. Although my group failed, it opened our eyes to what the club consisted of and what would be expected of us if we work at top firms.

The members of the club were super friendly and welcoming. They made it aware that this club would require all of our time aside from school, so I knew from there that although this club and the mentorship program would be highly beneficial for me, I knew I could not give all my time to this club, due to the throes of freshman year and adjusting to the college life. It was said that we can at least attend six of their workshops to be a part of the general club, so I hope to do that. I was lucky enough to go to this GIM as I have met people who are experience what I want to be in the future and I now know who to go to for help for my major and my future.

Club Visit

As I was deciding which colleges to apply to and later on which college to attend, Baruch stood out to me due to its emphasis on clubs. On countless fliers I picked up on Baruch from college fairs and visits, clubs were said to have diverse options ranging from academic to cultural and beyond. This really interested me due to my involvements in High School in number of clubs. Therefore, I was extremely excited to join a club in Baruch that would reflect my interests. I decided to join the Baruch Actuarial Science Society because I was always curious about actuarial science and the career. The photo is from the first meeting I attended. (It was super crowded even though I arrived early, so I had to stand. I am the third person by the wall from the left.) In general, the meeting was quite informative, and I learned a vast amount of information about what an actuary does and how to become one. The leaders are well informed and know how to run a club well, so I felt as if this club could be a good information source, which made me feel that I made the right choice coming to Baruch. Additionally, the leaders collected our emails, to which they consistently send information regarding opportunities and other important news. I attended the next meeting, the following week, which had presenters from Mass Mutual speaking about internship opportunities. Even though, I am not qualified to apply to much due to the testing that is requiring for actuarial science internships, I still learned a lot by listening to the speakers talk about their paths. For instance, one actuary spoke about how she realized that she wants to go into the field very late, yet she was still accepted. This comforted me because I am not sure what I was to study and what profession I want to enter. Overall, I hope to attend more meetings and learn more information.

Visting VSA(Vietnamese Student Association)

The first club that I had joined arriving at Baruch was VSA, otherwise known as the Vietnamese Student Association. I was introduced this club by my upperclassmen friend that was part of the e-board. I attended their first general interest meeting and managed to get to know the whole e-board. All of them were very kind and very welcoming. This lead me to continue going to the events of the club.

This picture was taken towards at the end of one of the events at the club. The event was the Summer Roll and the Language Workshop. There we learned how to make a traditional Vietnamese dish as well as some of the language, mainly items on a menu in a Vietnamese restaurant. In the photo is one of the e-board members, James. He is the Vice-President of Events within the club. He was one of the first people that introduced himself at the general interest meeting. The club provided a gateway to meeting all kinds of interesting people. Even though I am not Vietnamese, I find that this club will be very fun.

United Sikh Association

I attended the general interest meeting for the United Sikh Association club this week. The reason I decided to go to this club is because in America, there are not a lot of Sikh people and I wanted to meet some more. Where I grew up I was always the only Sikh kid in my school. Being able to meet new people who share the same beliefs as me was a unique experience because they have all been through the bigotry that I’ve been through. Since it was just a general interest meeting we didn’t do much there. We basically just introduced ourselves and told an experience that we had at Baruch. I actually knew one of the people who organizes the club and I play basketball with him often so I told that as my experience. Also, my sister graduated from Baruch in May and she recommended this club to me because she was a part of it also. I feel like this club really demonstrates Baruch’s diversity because you could make a club for any sort of religion/culture. I know there’s a Jewish club also and Latinx fraternity as well.

Going to a diverse school is beneficial for everyone in my opinion. You meet people from all around the world which could help with network or just help expand your horizons. Just because I am a Sikh and part of the Sikh club doesn’t mean that I am closed to going to other club meetings as well. I want to go to all these general interest meetings so I could meet people from cultures I don’t know much about and learn about them. Just as I would hope people who aren’t Sikh come check out the Sikh club so they could learn about our religion and who we are.

Painting Roman Kohanano

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Roman Kohanano

 

Before choosing to attend Baruch, I was worried that I would not have so much to do on campus. Many people would constantly tell me that Baruch is really only a commuter school and that there is nothing you can do to have fun. I decided to look into clubs and events to find ways to get more out of Baruch. I first began my search by thinking of which clubs or events would interest me the most. I was happy to hear that there was a painting event because I enjoy painting. When I attended the event I was able to meet a lot of new people and make new friends. The painting event was able to help me make friends with people who have similar interests to mine. I have such a large gap between my classes on Tuesdays and Thursdays. My break from 11:35 to 2:55 leaves me looking for tasks to pass time. Events such as the painting event will help me get through my day. Rather than sleeping in the library or watching videos on my phone, I would love to have hobby that gives me things to do. Because I was able to meet new people at the painting event, I was able to learn more things about Baruch and how to manage my time correctly. I learned more about other things to do on campus and off campus. Some people have “get togethers” after school where groups of kids get to know each other better and are able to get school work done together. I was also able to learn more about places to go for lunch. I did not know that there was a Chipotle close by and it is one of my favorite places to go and get food. This event definitely taught me things that will help me get through my first semester at Baruch.