Author: m.jones2

I recently attended a workshop on the benefits of working for start-ups rather than big businesses. It was hosted by two twins who had experience in both big and small business, and vastly preferred the second. The audience was told about how when working for a big business your job tends to be very specific and thus boring, not to mention the lack of responsibility you have. However, if you work for a start-up, they will be forced to use whatever skills you have due to their limited budget. In addition to this, if you work for a start-up, chances are that you will quickly be given significant responsibility as a start-up does not possess the budget to hire a manager for a department. I initially thought that the workshop would be a waste of time, and that it was simply a way to get a blog post done. However, after attending the workshop it’s clear to me that the information I received was incredibly valuable and may be of use to me in the future. This workshop also taught me a valuable lesson, if you’re passionate about something you can make anybody around you feel a fraction of that passion. I have little to no interest in startups but due to the sheer charisma and enthusiasm of the hosts, I began to feel interested in what they had to say. By the time the workshop was over I found myself very curios about the differences between big and small business, and I even did some light research.  

• Michael Jones

I am obsessed with the future, and I’ve been that way as long as I can remember. When I was younger, I was terrified by the concept of permanent damage. The idea that a single mistake could render my body slightly less useful until the end of my days petrified me. there was a brief period during my childhood in which I was too scared to play in the playground because I didn’t want to fall down and permanently damage my legs, I also remember doing regular vision tests to make sure my eyes were in pristine condition. but despite all those eye tests, I still need glasses, and despite being as careful as I could, a few months back I had to have a surgery on my ankle, despite all my fear I’m still damaged. Fear doesn’t prevent bad things from happening, if anything it just makes the good things less memorable. Being so consumed by fear of what the future might hold, made me see everything as a threat, and that in turn made the present just as terrible as I was afraid the future might be. All my time worrying about the future didn’t do me any good, because anytime that I think about the future I’m ignoring the present. Ignoring all the wonderful things around me and instead choosing to focus on things that might go wrong. Everyday I try to catch myself whenever I start thinking about the future because as boring as the present might seem, it’s real, and any thoughts I might have about the future aren’t. I think at least for me, focusing on the present is the key to a happy life.

The time had come once again to write a blog post and I had no clue what to write about. I had made the mistake of waiting until the last minute to find a school activity that was eligible for a blog post and I had begun to panic. Thankfully, a friend I went to high school with (that now goes to Baruch) informed me that she was involved in a club that I could check out. I went to the club room to find that the club I was attending was “Anime Club”. It’s important to note that at this point in my life I don’t have much of an interest in Anime, but as I needed to write a blog post about this experience I figured that I shouldn’t cut it short. Despite what I originally thought was going to happen I found that I actually enjoyed the experience quite a bit. While I didn’t fully understand the things the club members were talking about, it was evident that they were incredibly passionate and that made the experience an exciting one. It’s always intriguing to see people discussing the things they care about and that was exactly what I was witnessing. While attending the club didn’t give me an interest in anime it motivated me to cultivate interests of my own in the hopes of one day experiencing the joy and passion that those club members felt.

Me and math don’t really get along all that well. I think this started in middle school when my teacher began using a website called DeltaMath. On DeltaMath it didn’t matter how close you were to the answer, if you weren’t right on the money you didn’t get credit. In retrospect I understand why it worked that way, but at the time it was the bane of my existence. So with all that in mind, the Idea of going to the National Museum Of Math didn’t really peak my interest, but after finding out how close it was to Baruch my love of convenience outweighed my hatred of math, and I was on my way. When I walked in I was pleasantly surprised to find that this museum wasn’t glorifying the kind of math that I had come to despise, instead it was highlighting all the cool things that can be accomplished with math. There were puzzles, mazes, and a whole bunch of other stuff I didn’t initially expect to find in a museum of math. Something that stood out to me was this activity where you had to use a program to design a shape, and the shapes that people liked would be 3D printed and put on display. Sadly, my skill didn’t really match my enthusiasm when it came to that activity and while I planned on making an intricate and cool shape I ended up making a virtual snowball. Another cool thing they had was a programmable cannon, pointed at a basketball hoop. It was the job of the visitor to set the velocity and angle of the cannon, then load up a basketball and hope for the best. While this was one of the more complicated attractions of the museum it became clear after a few successes in a row that it was pretty difficult to miss the hoop when using the cannon. Overall the Museum of Math was a pretty good time, and as sappy as this sounds I think that it showed me the cool side of math when up until that point I only chose to see the boring side.
– Michael Jones