This past weekend Malik, Malichi and I had the honor of being chosen as 3 of the 36 students chosen to represent Baruch at this years NABA eastern regional student conference. This conference saw over 600 students from various universities in the east with only 18 of us being freshman . We were blessed to be sponsored with an all expense paid trip to Norfolk Virginia from Thursday October 5th-Sunday October 8th. The conference occurs each year with the focus of getting young minority students the opportunity of interacting and meeting professionals from some of the worlds top firms and banks. Many students won scholarships from the firms and even had the opportunity of being interviewed for internships and jobs at these companies .
On Thursday as we arrived a bit later than was expected I only had the opportunity of attending 3 events. The opening session, An information session on Capital One, and the Game night event. At the Opening session we were divided into 30 or so groups each with about 20 people where we had to manage an investment portfolio as a team in order to see which group could rack up the greatest revenue in a limited amount of time. I later attended the Information session where I was then able to connect with recruiters and was even able to apply for an upcoming finance summit being held by the company. Following this I went to the game night event where I was finally able to take of my suit, eat, and learned to play spades and went on an undefeated streak with my partner Jessica. I lastly headed back up to my hotel room to prepare myself for the early morning the next day.
On Friday my roommates and I woke up early in preparation of the career fair being held from 8-11. Suits pressed and resumes in hand, we headed down to the 3rd floor to find the grand hall bustling with companies and people interacting with each other. After the initial butterflies in my stomach I took a deep breath and walked in confidently to introduce myself and network with the professionals. At the end of the Career fair I had networked with recruiters from 2 of the big 4 accounting firms and various other smaller firms and banks and learned about various opportunities for myself as a freshman in their companies. I later attended various seminars throughout the day such as “careers in government” and “fraud in ethics in business”. The day was wrapped up with the 80s/90s themed party that was held where you already know your boy got litt
Saturday was the last official day of events which began with the scholarship breakfast where I am proud to say that 2 of our Baruch students where awarded scholarships for their hard work. This was also followed by various seminars, one of which was ” investments 101 ” which I attended where we had to balance a persons budget to ensure that they could pay back all their debts and had money left over to save and invest. We all later had to attend an event where our groups from day 1 were granted an hour to film a video that brought attention to a specific problem in the world ,mine being depression. Following the presentation of everyone’s videos there was another party in which the various Naba chapters got together to have fun for one final time .
All in all the ESRC was very informative and helped me to further narrow down what I want to do with my career and showed me the path I need to take in order to make sure that I accomplish my goals. I got to make some amazing friends and learned how to carry myself in a professional environment. This was an event that I am very grateful that I was able to attend