September 2017 – Page 2 – Freshman Seminar Fall 17 DTD

FRO DTD Blog #1- E-Sports Assoication

On September 9th, I went to the general interest meeting for Baruch E-Sports Association with my friends. The meeting took place in room 4-180 in the Newman Vertical Campus. E-sports are multiplayer video games played competitively by professional players. Some examples of e-sports are League of Legends, CSGO, Dota, and Super Smash Bros. Melee. I went to the meeting because I want to meet other people who play the same games as me. Unfortunately, no one plays the same games as me.

In my first meeting, the president, Tiffany Yee, and the vice president, Feng Lan, introduced themselves to us. Then, they talked about League of Legend and CSGO, the two games Baruch sponsors. They spoke about having tryouts for those two games. It was unimportant to me because I don’t play CSGO or League of Legends. Next, the president talked about how our next meeting is in the computer lab. After that, the vice president talks about the accomplishments of the clubs. One of the accomplishment was that the Baruch’s CSGO team won first place in a tournament. They have foods and drinks for us to eat for lunch. I was so hungry and ate my first slice of pizza quickly. During lunch, I talked to my friend, Marcus, about Nintendo games. I play a game called Super Smash Bros. 4 and Pokemon while my friend plays games on Steam and Pokemon. After lunch, the president asked, “Which games do we play?” Most people in the club play League of Legends and CSGO. Then, we played an icebreaker to get to know each other. I talked with my friend’s friends. I learned that he likes to play a game called Overwatch. After the icebreaker, we took a group photo of each other. FInally, I decided to leave the meeting after the photo. I still don’t know what club I want to join. It was interesting but I don’t think this is the club for me.

FRO BLOG #1- Joining Hillel

For the first few weeks of Baruch, I was unsure of what club or student organization I wanted to be a part of. As the first few weeks went on, I heard my friends talk about Hillel and why Hillel was the scene of the “chill”. They mentioned all the lunchtime learning initiatives, and how the free food was incredible. The one thing that all my friends kept mentioning but continued to stick to me was that it was a community. I decided that in order to make my Baruch experience even more enjoyable, I needed to be a part of some community and Hillel would be the perfect fit.

When I walked into Hillel, I was shocked by the amount of people that were just there to chill. I saw ten of my friends all sitting together eating some pizza and sandwiches and just talking about there day. I sat down and chilled alongside them, when the president of the Hillel came over to me and introduced all the daily activities that go on throughout the day. Theres lunch and learn with free lunch, Sunday events and guest speakers that come to speak on a regular basis. I signed up and sat in on a lunch and learn that was taking place in the back. Even though the Hillel was a little small and cramped, it still fostered a environment of community. Everyone either knew each other, had mutual friends, or met someone new. Hillel is a really good resource for meeting new people but also being able to hang out with friends that you already know. I also felt really comfortable talking to students from the higher grades and was able to get some much needed advice for the year. Now I know that the Hillel is a place I could come to to utilize helpful resources and to meet up and chill with friends.

Joining Absolute Adrenaline

I went to the meeting of Absolute Adrenaline club on Thursday. The reason I wanted to join this club was, it seemed great in the pictures of the club members playing paintball, I had never done that in my entire life. By that, I meant I had never joined a club in high school nor had I played paintball. The first thing we did in the room was an ice breaking game, the rule of the game was to pick a captain, and a guesser, everyone has to follow the action of the captain, the guesser has to guess who is the captain. The game was quite funny, we brought up the mood, and that was when the club member started to introduce what we will do if we joined this club.

As I mentioned, the Club name was what they wanted us to do on/off club time. They did sports like ball games (basketball, volley ball, table tennis, and football, they got the downstair gym as the play spot.) during club time; hiking, climbing, paintball, ice skating and, many others off school or during weekends.

In my perspective, joining a club is a big part of 4 years college life, especially for the first two year. You can make friends in the club, you will meet new people like the president of your club, he/she must be great or how come he/she has a club? The last but no least, you can join a major club like finance major club and, accounting major club etc. In there you will meet people who has the same major as you, you can discuss major questions or point of views during the club, or you can even discuss about the assignments, you will find a brand new world when you joined a club.

Joining the E-Sports club

My first activity was to join a club and what better club for me was the E-Sports club. The second i entered the club room i knew this was the place for me. Everybody had the same interests as me and were very welcoming and interactive and eager to speak about their own interests. Once we started to meat the club President and other members from the club they were very welcoming and seemed to show a lot of enthusiasm for everybody to join, and try out for their competitive teams.

Once the president showed us how competitive the club was it was overwhelming. Their club members won 20,000$ from a past tournament in an online game and everybody was very good at the games they played. They all seemed to be very strict with how they would recruit members to join the competitive teams and help them succeed in tournaments and play well. However they also reassured us that there is a casual side to the club where u can come in and hang out with other members and causally play games and get better with them overtime.

The club seemed like a lot of fun to improve on my gaming and to make new friends that have the same taste as me. The club president also told us that they were setting up a part of the library that would be reserved to the club members so they could play games on their free time and enjoying playing games with other members. The club itself was very organised and strict with recruitment policies for teams and had many branches to the club to make it all work together and had helpful and friends members all around. I personally won’t join any of their competitive team because i’m not good enough yet but i will most likely be part of the regular club activities.

Joining Hillel because its fun

My first experience at Hillel was great, I enjoyed the Programming and I also enjoyed the people in the organization. Everyone was very nice and welcoming and I knew I was going to join this organization. Hillel offers so many great things to young adults especially being in a club where everyone values the Jewish heritage and the Israeli culture. The organization has many clubs attached to it as well, and I will be joining one of the clubs. The organization is super active and always has programs to go to.

I went to a program and I really enjoyed it. We listened to a singer talk about her past and how she dealt with cancer right in the middle of her music career. I wouldn’t have ever heard her story, but thanks to Hillel I did because it was very inspirational and educational.

One of the perks of joining Hillel is that there is always food. They have had pizza, Chinese food, and even sandwiches so far. Food is a available at every program. Another perk of joining Hillel is that you get to meet new people and make friends who share interests with you. And a third perk is being part of a community because it is nice to be a part of something that is so big.

I see myself getting involved in the organization during the year a lot because I enjoy the atmosphere and vibe. I want to be an active member and constantly show up to as many programs as I can so that I can learn and enjoy what is being talked about.

Hillel is a very good club and seems to be very active at Baruch, so I might as well enjoy what has been offered to me and take all the advantages that the organization gives to me.

academic blogpost

The first activity I did this semester was go to the Frick Collection on the Upper East Side. It is a museum with lots of art from a number of generations from a vast array of cultures. There are multiple rooms that have different themes that are made to evoke different emotions in people as they make their way around. I found that my visit to The Frick Collection helped me most with gaining better techniques to implement into my writing in English class. The way that the paintings’ portrayal of those depicted in them are definitely very different from the people that they were in life. By utilizing certain colors and designs in the decor, they could make the subjects of the paintings seem nicer or more serious. The same can be applied to the creation of a character in a story or a personal essay. Words with certain connotations can be used to create subtext and depth within the traits of a character or the overall piece, much like the museum did with its paintings.

The Frick Collection also gave me a new perspective and inspiration for not only my future art projects but writing as well. The museum also incorporated personal possessions of infamous global figures from a variety of different eras, such as Marie Antoinette. This further helped to humanize her as through film and book portrayals of her, she has become a mystical character to most. This same thing tends to happen in writing. The genre of personal essay, which we’re studying, emphasizes greatly on the identity of a character and what humanizes them. Although I can’t make artifacts for fictional characters, this helped me realize that by mixing in a different type of art the museum had in turn added a sort of anecdote to Marie Antoinette’s exhibition. I could use this to my advantage in my own writing by adding tiny anecdotes to humanize my fictional characters.