a.saydaliev – Freshman Seminar Fall 17 DTD

Blog Post 3 – Academic

Last week, I went to the Metropolitan Museum of Art. During my time, I explored the Ancient Egypt exhibit. It was one of my assignments to visit historical museum for my history course. The Ancient Egypt exhibit was huge. I took me almost 3 hours to finish the exhibit. I saw a pottery model of their lifestyle where it had houses, slaughter house for domestic animals and more. It was interesting to see that they had various boat styles for various events. For example, ancient Egyptians had specific style of boat for carrying deceased person and specific boat for pregnant woman. Most of all, the most important part of the exhibit was the mummies and coffins. They had a lot of coffins ranging from old ones to the recently excavated ones. Each coffin had different writings and drawings on it. Some of them were large in size and some of them were small as 5 feet in height. The rooms that they had coffins were low light that it was scary to look at the coffins. In addition, the museum had a large room where they created the environment of ancient Egypt. What I mean by that is they had small houses where you can enter and inside will be Egyptians writing on the walls. Moreover, museum also had Ancient Egyptians’ jewelries weapons and potteries they used during their daily lives.

Overall, I liked my visit to the museum because I get see the actual items of the ancient Egypt. It is incredible to see their artistic skills in writings and carvings on the coffins to create the image of pharaohs. I believe the museum visit was useful and informative since it contributed to my learning and it brought visualization since my textbook contains black and white colored images. I recommend this museum for those who are taking the prehistory course.

Blog Post 2 – Career

Couple weeks ago, I went to the Cover Letter Workshop that was offered by Sigma Alpha Delta. The Career Development committee from the Sigma Alpha Delta organized this event. Specifically, Devon and Rachael were the leaders of this event. Nevertheless, the workshop was taught by a guest from the STARR Career Development Center. I forgot her name. Anyways, I was seeking for this workshop because I needed help with writing my own cover letter. This workshop was helpful not only for freshman, but also for upperclassmen as they seek to tweak their own cover letter to have the best one. I went to the workshop with my friend and he also needed help with writing his own cover letter. We took notes and participated in group discussions. The STARR representative gave us general tips on cover letter. She told us about the format, do’s and don’ts and examples to show what she meant in the tips. She shared some examples of cover letters where the writer exaggerated his or herself and some writers being authentic or sounding natural. The most important tip I learned was not writing my cover letter as my resume such that I list my experiences word to word based on the chronological order of my resume. She also touched on skills that employers want to see and how we can describe our skills with strong words.

After the event, we got a chance to talk with Devon. He walked us through his experience with STARR Career Development Center and the impact of cover letter in interviews. My time during the workshop went well. Devon and STARR member offered us to bring our cover letter once it is written. Thus, they can review my cover letter. I believe it is important to update our resumes and cover letters because it will change over the four years.

Blog Post 1 – Student Life

The club I visited was UNICEF. Initially, I didn’t know much about the club nor the organization, although I saw the UNICEF tags on soccer team jerseys or banners. UNICEF stands for United Nation International Children’s Emergency Fund and they advocate and fundraise toward helping children across the countries in education, protection and child survival. In Baruch, UNICEF club fundraises money for the actual program and work with UNICEF to plan events. Last year, the team went to the UNICEF headquarters to gain more insight of what UNICEF does. At Baruch, the club does bake sale to raise money to help those unprivileged children in other countries. While my time at the meeting, they wanted everybody to engage with others with their fun activities. First, we watched a video of UNICEF going to countries and helping children to get clean water and providing education that brought tears to the viewers. Seeing children stand in line to get clean water or going to classes where they are being taught outside without a roof made me feel sympathetic. Then, we played ice breakers and bingo and found out interesting things about each other. This club made me realize that there is something we can do help others outside of obtaining our degree. It helped us to feel empowered. Everybody had fun and asked questions afterwards. At the end of the day, we are the next generation and we can change the world. If we look around the world, many influencer put their efforts to help others outside of their work or career. Life is not all about attaining your dream job. It is also helping others to become successful especially those who are unable to get education. I love the initiatives the schools are taking and promoting to help for good cause. Members of the club love what they do and makes them feel accomplished for taking such initiative.