August 2017 – First-Year Seminar FMA

Student Life

I was recently at one of the Hillel club meetings. At one of the meetings, we definitely got the feeling of inclusion. Everyone was happy and full of life, willing to answer our questions. They played music and had free food, making everyone feel welcome. Chinese food was not too bad, but I definitely hoarded the lollipops and fortune cookies, just because I am that type of person. I definitely signed up, as I can’t wait to meet new friends and get into a new circle of friends. In addition, I signed up for a business club that deals with investments. It definitely was worth going to. As a result, I will not be attending weekly meetings with my friends, meeting new people and trying new things along the way. I can not wait to jump into this and get involved. It will make me feel as if I am doing something in my Baruch career and getting involved. Now that is definitely my intention there. I do not want to be one of those kids who just goes to class and does not experience everything that Baruch has to offer for me. Plus, most of the things there are free of charge! So there is no reason not to try them. I will be sure to take full advantage of all the opportunities offered here. Hopefully some of the next steps will be to go on trips and see what there is in the Jewish community. I will also hope to get involved in the finance club. That will help me launch my career and teach me things that I need to know, from people who would directly know it! It will be a great source for mentoring me and jump starting my path to success in the real world.

Student Life

My impression with Hillel is insane. It seems like an amazing club with some interesting people who I’d definitely like to get involved with before I graduate from Baruch. I am not Jewish, but you do not need to be Jewish to join their club. They’re an awesome group of people, and their meeting was one of the coolest meetings I’ve been too. While their I learned about various other clubs as well, and ended up joining one other in addition to Hillel. This club was a group of investors who wanted to teach us the ins and outs, as well as get involved in real estate which is my major. While they were more concerned about the residential side, and I on the other hand are concerned with the commercial/industrial side, it will still be fun to collaborate with them. The major difference between the two is that residential is very much based on emotion, as couples either love or hate the house. With commercial on the other hand, its not an impulse purchase, and people are not attached to warehouses or buildings like they are regular homes. In the future I’d like to get even more involved in these clubs, possibly becoming a leading member or even a president one day. Even though I doubt I’d ever be a president, being a leading member and making speeches is right up my alley, as public speaking does not bother me as it does most. I also ended up getting free food, which was a common occurrence when I first came to the school and got a tour. I was told I would always be given free food and they were not kidding. They ended up ordering Chinese, and we all feasted and enjoyed our fortunes from the fortune cookies afterwards.

Academic Post

I would never have had a reason to go to a museum in the middle of the day during class if it wasn’t for this assignment. This one event opened up my eyes into how I could explore all of New York City with my Baruch ID. In addition to broadening my horizons, as I have never been here before, it showed me the fact that as students, we live in this great city and rarely visit its landmarks, whereas people from all over the world pay thousands of dollars to come here to see all that the city has to offer. All of the free events and concerts and things like that, while being paid for by the masses, have been shown to me and will definitely be utilized. I will be sure to use this pass in the future for my benefit as a citizen of this city. The museum itself was splendid. Me and a friend observed Greek and Roman artifacts, as well as some African and Native American pieces. We gazed at the beauty of the objects inside, as they very much were beautiful in all aspects. Would have liked to take some home but unfortunately I cannot. All in all, it was a very intriguing day that peaked my interest in all that New York City has to offer! In the future, I will be sure to go to other museums and New York City events for fun to see what other things I can discover that would be to my liking. It sure would be nice to make this assignment optional though, as I can definitely see making people go to a museum an as unworthy task that would be lamented. But on the other hand, I really recommend that other CUNY students visit places in this city, as it will add up to a fun day out.

Academic Blog Freshman Seminar

Going to this museum truly showed me the power of having a Baruch ID. With my ID, I was able to get into the museum completely for free, and was able to walk around for as long as I pleased. I ended up bringing a friend from the freshman seminar class, and we walked around for about an hour just exploring the vast artifacts that are contained at this museum, such as African Gold, Greek and Roman stained glass, and many other artifacts. I learned things yesterday that I would’ve never known if it were not for my student ID, because I would’ve never went in the first place if I did not have incentive. Our Baruch IDs also let us get into various other museums around NYC, and I plan on continuing to go, free at cost, throughout the rest of my semester here, as you learn a lot of things going to these museums. You would think that walking around a museum is not a lot of fun, and probably the last thing you’d want to do as a freshman in college, but it really opened my eyes and broadened my horizons. This museum will also help me in my government class, because we saw artifacts from collapsed governments, and were able to witness just how greedy these governments got before they ended up separating. As a freshman in college in one of the biggest cities in the world, their are probably a million other things an average college student would want to do, but these students also do not have access to these free amenities like we students at Baruch have. I highly suggest everyone take advantage of all the free stuff we can do, because people around the world come to NYC just to do these activities that we have access too everyday, and they pay a lot of money to do them!

Hello FMA!

This is our Blogs@Baruch site, where you all will be posting your assigned Enrichment Workshop responses. As a reminder, you will need to complete one enrichment workshop from each an Academic, Career, and Student Life perspective.

Please be sure you categorize and/or tag each of your posts (on the righthand side of the screen while composing your response) with which Enrichment Workshop category you are covering. This will both help me while grading your posts, and also help your classmates to see what kinds of activities they may be interested in!

I encourage you all to use this platform to share your experiences throughout the semester, and to get to know each other as well as the Baruch College community.

As always, please feel free to ask me any questions, and come to me with any concerns you may have.

Have fun with these workshops, and get blogging!