Freshman Seminar Fall 17 DWB

Rebecka Lee – Career – Blog Post #3

I took the Focus 2 Assessment for this final blog post. There were a lot of survey-like questions, separated into categories to try to get a better view of what a person might want to focus their career path on, like their personality or their skills. It followed a pretty standard format of rating an action or statement by how much you agree or disagree with the statements, much like other career assessments I’ve seen. Comparing my survey results, there seemed to be a lot of discrepancies in the outcomes. The end results of each small part of the survey pointed towards different types of careers, so I tried to use the combine assessments feature, where it tried to mash together the results of two or more of the separate smaller assessments into one overall result. That didn’t work out so well. There was almost no overlap between categories at all. In all honesty it was disheartening, but it gives me some nice information to work with. I think the takeaway is mainly that of the five surveyed topics, none of my results match up with each other. My personality doesn’t match my work interests; my skills don’t reflect my values, etc. A good way to resolve this might be to just add to myself, like learning more skills and developing different work interests. The majors that kept popping up that the site claimed would fit well with their recommended careers were biology, and business administration and management. This gives me more to consider for that major that I haven’t chosen yet, which is helpful and appreciated.

Rebecka Lee – Student Life – Blog Post #2

watching others set up chairs for the game

Last Thursday I went to an event hosted by the Hong Kong Club. The day before that, Wednesday, had been the day of the Mid-Autumn Festival, which is a holiday that’s celebrated, as opposed to holidays that aren’t celebrated for whatever reason. Is it a shame that the two days didn’t coincide? Maybe a bit, but calendars and scheduling don’t always like to play along. Hosting an event about a holiday that occurred the day before just happens sometimes.
The Mid-Autumn Festival is held on the fifteenth day of the eighth month of the Chinese lunar calendar. This day is supposedly when the moon appears to be the biggest and brightest. I think it depends on point of view and where on Earth a person is, but that’s purely from my own unscientific observations made with eyeballs and more often than not, cloud interference. One major part of this holiday is gathering to watch the moon with one’s family while eating mooncake. There are various types of mooncakes, but the general idea is that its a circular pastry (round, like the moon) comprised of mostly filling (lotus root paste is a sweet classic) and a thin dough shell that is decorated with designs and writing on top. Sometimes a yolk from a hard boiled egg is placed in the middle of the mooncake, so when it’s cut, surprise! It’s something else that’s round, like the moon.
After providing people who went to the event with some food and telling some information about the Mid-Autumn Festival, the members of the Hong Kong Club set up a game. The closest thing it reminded me of was musical chairs, but with two teams and instead of taking away chairs one person per team had to try to guess how many people would stand up per round. To win, a team needed to correctly guess the correct number twice. The losing team would then be forced to eat pieces of mooncake covered with hot sauce. As strange as that might sound, the lotus root paste was overpoweringly sweet so the hot sauce taste was lost within seconds.

FRO Blog Post #1

Today I went to the Museum of Modern Art, or MoMA, to look at some of the pieces being exhibited. I didn’t have any idea what was on display. I walked around the block beforehand, but didn’t see any posters or advertisements beckoning passersby inside like there are with other museums. That might’ve been due to the ongoing construction/renovation on part of the building though. After getting a ticket and a quick bag check, I took the escalators to the highest floor I had access to (higher floors seemed to have been roped off in preparation for an upcoming exhibit) and stepped into the nearest gallery. From behind a wall I could see a crowd of people gathered around something, more than around any of the surrounding pieces. Their reasoning became clearer once I turned the corner. Van Gogh’s “Starry Night” alone on the wall with spectators forming almost a semi-circle around it. I snapped a quick photo to commemorate the surprise encounter. Other things that stood out were the scale of some of the artwork and how much noise there was. From needing multiple walls to display one piece, devoting a whole area to a bubbling rectangular (or square) vat of grey liquid that echoed and splattered, or just a projection on the floor. There were even interactive sections where visitors could draw both traditionally and digitally or build and design architectural features. Encouraging active participation instead of solely showcasing works definitely wasn’t expected. Overall the experience served as a cool visual reminder to get lost instead of pushing to find something.