j.santoro – First-Year Seminar FMA

Museum of Modern Art

On Tuesday November 14th, I visited the Museum of Modern Art so I could better understand what modern art is. I walked into the museum with high hopes that I would see some mind-blowing art work, but not that many pieces stood out to me. The first two floors had galleries by very interesting artists, but not very thought provoking art work. I wanted to see the deeper meaning in these paintings but for some reason I just couldn’t get anything out of them. On a funny note, I was yelled at by security for stepping over the line at one of the paintings. Nothing serious but I forgot that that was a thing. The next two floors had much better exhibits, in my opinion, because they were from various artists about various topics. It was really cool to see Vincent Van Gogh’s The Starry Night in person. I’ve looked at that painting in so many classes and I was unreal to be so close to it. It was so much different from seeing it on paper or on a screen because you could actually see the brush strokes in the details of the painting. My favorite group of painters had to be the Italian modernists, or futurists. Their paintings were the images I see when I think of modern art. You could see in their paintings that there was a deeper meaning but they weren’t exactly revealed by just looking at them. Although not Italian, Cy Twombly was a modernist and painted in Italy. He painted my favorite paintings their which was a collection called ‘The Four Seasons’. Each of the four paintings represented a different season which you could guess from their respective color schemes. But the thing with these paintings that perplexed me was the use of other colors for certain seasons that got me thinking about why those colors and what do they mean. I would definitely recommend this museum

to anyone interested in modern art!

Men’s Cross Country Team

Joining the cross country team was a very tough decision to make, but as the season draws to a close, I without a doubt don’t regret whatsoever. In high school I ran spring track for three seasons, but I always enjoyed running three or four miles on the treadmill during the off season. This got me interested in running cross country during college. However, I was conflicted because I wanted to run but practice and meets would take serious amounts of time away from my school work. I was very clear with myself that I needed to prioritize grades and professional development in college, and I couldn’t let running get in the way of that. After much debate I decided to join because running was a stress reliever for me and I felt it would be not only healthy for me, but a great way to meet people and bond as a team. Practice was twice a day, six days a week for approximately 2 hours each. The first daily practice, always in the first half of the day, was a speed workout aimed at improving our kick. These typically involved interval sets, sometimes with hills mixed in and sometimes with longer distances, that went from fast to easy and vice versa. The second daily workout was always an endurance run at Central Park. At the first night practice we ran an 8k (4.99 miles) and every practice from then on increased by 1k. The last endurance run I ran for practice was 18.6 miles. Let me tell you something: there is nothing more thought provoking than running through a poorly lit section of Central Park in Harlem. For meets, our race is an 8k over semi-hilly terrain. In every meet the top five runners from each team, based on the meet results, score for the team. So far I’m competing for that fifth spot with two other guys and I hope to obtain it at the coming championship and push the team to victory. The course we run the most, and the course for the CUNY Championship, is the cross country trail at Van Cortland Park. Overall, I’ve loved my time on the cross country team because it really did help me relieve stress and meet like-minded freshman.

Career and Internship Fair

On Friday September 15th, I attended the Fall 2017 Undergraduate Career Day hosted by STARR. In order to do this I had to create my STARR Search account, input my personal information so potential employers could see, and uploaded my resume. Since business attire was required for the the fair, I went with the recommended black suit, black pants, white shirt, and a non-flashy, red tie. Because the event was so big, the line to get in was massive and I had to wait more than a half hour before I could go in.

The fair was a great opportunity for me, and others, to browse through a number of companies in different fields and talk to their representatives to learn more about their company and the field. Unfortunately I couldn’t talk to any big financial companies that were there because the lines were too long and I felt that since I was only a freshman, they wouldn’t want me for an internship.

Now the main reason why I went there was so I could talk to the US Marine recruiter because I was interested in their leadership summer program. For me this was a benefit to have at the fair because it allowed me to talked to them for a little while and give them my contact information so I could learn more about the program and hopefully qualify for it. Then I did some more waking and I talked to a smaller financial company named Broadridge Financial Solutions that was looking for interns. I gave them my resume, but I wasn’t overly enthusiastic about their company and they didn’t seem enthusiastic with me either.

Another company I went to was Target. The line was short and I just wanted to see if they had any bookkeeping job opportunities. Unfortunately, they were looking for cashiers and clerks and didn’t mention any sort of bookkeeping position to me. The only company that was remotely interested in me was Enterprise car rentals, but I couldn’t really see myself working for them. All in all the career fair wasn’t a waste of my time and I was happy that I made the effort to attend because I learned about career paths that I was interested in and not so interested in.

However, I feel I would’ve been more successful had I attended a STARR prep workshop before I went to the fair. My resume definitely could’ve used some tweaking before the event. Also, I didn’t really research companies beforehand like I should’ve, so I feel that if I went to a prep workshop, they would’ve helped me pinpoint companies that I’d be interested in and then I could’ve focused on those companies instead of walking around aimlessly. Overall, I could’ve made the fair a much more productive experience had I gone to a prep workshop.