Month: October 2017

Gym Monologue

The thing about the gym is that at the gym, unless you’re focusing on decreasing what you see on the scale, the numbers go up, not down. Your muscles get bigger. The weights you lift get heavier. The time you can hold a plank gets longer. The number of exercises you can master get more numerous. However, over the last few years, there are a few things I’ve come to love about the gym experience. Here are the top 9, in no particular order

1) Endorphins

Even though I sometimes have to force myself to go, I always enjoy that natural high after a good workout. That feeling of euphoria is a great reward for the hard work I’ve just put in. You never really regret going to the gym

2) Results

It’s a long, slow process, but the results do happen if you stick with it. My father compared it to working with clay… you start off with a shapeless lump; but, every time you go to the gym, you are splashing water on that clay and spinning it, and slowly shaping your body into the figure you desire. You can lose weight without exercising, but how much more will you enjoy a strong, fit body when you finally reach your goal?

3) Health

Every Monday, when I start a new week of working out, I feel stronger than the week before. I find that I can do a few more reps, go a little faster on the treadmill, or do an extra set of weight training than I was previously capable of doing.

4) Variety

Going to the gym means that I have a ton of options available to me, when it comes to my workout routine. I go to a gym that is very basic; but even so, there are quite a few different cardio machines, weight machines, circuit training, and even training classes provided that focus on every part of the body. Every time I start to get bored, I change things up and try something new. And some gyms offer many other resources, such as aerobic classes, spinning classes, yoga, zumba, basketball, swimming, saunas, and many other options.

5) Cost

As I mentioned above, my gym is pretty basic. There are classes, but no pool. It does have plenty of every kind of cardio machine and weight machine you could want, as well as free weights and space for doing floor work. All of this, and it only costs $30 a month with no contractual obligations.

6) Clear Mind

I can’t even begin to tell you how many times I’ve had a rough day or was going through a difficult situation and resorted to the gym. It’s a place to go where you can clear your head or maybe even get anger out. You focus on getting a good workout in and work on yourself which forces you to forget everything else.

7) Availability

A lot of gyms these days, not including mine, are open 24 hours. So, there’s no excuse for not finding time to go, even if it’s only for 30 minutes. You can get a good sweat going after 30 minutes on the treadmill or elliptical, and even the busiest among us can find 30 minutes in a 24 hour day, at least twice a week, to spend at the gym. That’s another excuse solved. There are even daycare facilities at many gyms, for those who can’t find, or afford, a babysitter.

8) Challenges

Every week, I push myself just a tiny bit harder than I did the week before. I add a workout or to my abs routine, or I go a tenth of a mile an hour faster on the treadmill, or a higher amount of weight for benching. And sometimes I simply try to beat my own previous record, whether it’s an extra rep or maxing out the amount of weight I can do for one rep. Nothing makes me happier than setting a new personal record, and realizing how far I’ve come

9) Partners

My gym partner is my best friend. We motivate each other to go when the other one doesn’t feel like it. But he’s not the only gym partner I’ve ever had. Along the way, I’ve worked out with many different friends, and we’ve always managed to inspire each other to give a greater effort than we would have done alone. This makes the gym experience more enjoyable, and allows my competitive spirit to kick in.

For this career based blog, I recently went to an entrepreneur workshop on october seventeenth. I think it was an overall good experience because it gave the base knowledge of owning a company and being an entrepreneur. It showed the different kids of businesses that could be ran. For an example, they explained the steps on making money online. It gave step by step the way someone would be able to make money through an online company. You don’t even need to leave your house. They also were persistent on how much time and effort it takes to run a company. Having it is a start-up business takes a lot of financial risk but high reward. It gave me ideas on my own business that I could run online. One of my friends on the baseball team already built and sold his online business making a profit of over twenty thousand dollars. The key to building a business is learning what works first. Learning from other successful entrepreneurs is key. Observing to see what works and what fails helps so you don’t make those mistakes. My friend built multiple companies but his success was from “Mutts and Putts”. He sold dog toys, outfits, beds and other accessories to dog lovers online. He was technically the middle man who mad money off a product that wasn’t his. He was just distributing it through an online website. This shows that it is possible to make money without even really having a product that is your own. Another thing that was great about the career fair was free pizza. That was definitely a plus. It helped me get there in the first place from the smell and helped to stay there. Overall I think it was a good experience, although I did have to leave early because I had baseball. I’d go to another one. 

 

T’was the last day of September, and the weather was as hot as summer. I took a hoodie anyway because I knew that my destination would be cool. After about 2 hours of train commute because of messed up weekend schedules, my friend and I ended up walking half an hour to the Museum of Natural History– a great way to start the day. Using my handy-dandy Baruch Student ID, I gained access to the Museum by paying a mere 5 cents, to which the lady gave me a stank face. After all, it was a suggested fee. But because I had a guilty conscience, I ended up forking over $15 anyway. After getting lost in the Museum (because real men don’t ask for directions), my friend and I eventually found the gift shop, where I purchased some crickets for consumption. They were about $3 for 3 crickets and it was so not worth it.They tasted like how flies smell when you kill them with an electric fly swatter and fry them. Since I am a spontaneous person and am good at wasting time, we actually spent more time in other exhibits other than the Hall of Human Origins, which we were supposed to go to. One such exhibit was about minerals and gemstones, where I found out that Gems can be of various colors. For example, an emerald doesn’t HAVE to be green, an onyx gem could be just as green as the former. We ended up exploring a space exhibit as well; we even got to see how much we weighed on other planets! All in all, the Museum was a great experience, and although most of my fun was found in the gift shop, things can get expensive and fast. Note: The astronaut “ice cream” is NOT worth the $7, it was very dry and crumbly.

 

  As part of a Cultural Anthropology assignment we were told to visit the Hall of Human Origins at the American Museum of Natural History. We had to make an exam based off the information presented at the exhibition. I had been to this museum a million times before, and there wasn’t really anything new for me to see, so I wasn’t expecting to enjoy my visit. However, when I went on October 1st with my friends I actually ended up having a great time. We took a bunch of silly pictures all around the museum all the while, learning about dinosaurs, space, evolution, and various cultures. I also ended up taking a ton of educational pictures of the different parts of the exhibition to use for my Anthropology project. The specific area we were told to focus on for our assignment had actually always been my favorite part of the museum. Learning about our ancestors and our origins as a species is mind-blowing. The Hall of Human Origins offers extensive information about human evolution, migration, and our earliest ancestors. It also delves into the origins ofhuman creativity and some of the most profound mysteries of humankind. I love that this exhibition always leaves me questioning things and wondering about the uncertainties of human evolution. After finishing my assignment, we continued to explore the rest of the museum and went through many of the cultural halls which are also very interesting. Learning about different cultures, practices, and beliefs makes your perspective of the world broader and allows you to be more appreciative of our diversity. Although it may seem like a hassle, going to museums is so important and if anyone has never been to this museum in particular, I definitely recommend it.

This week for enrichment workshop I visited an in school club, The Grid. The Grid is a tabletop gaming club, such as chess, uno, board games, and card games. The club has many options of various games, which are all interesting on the own right, but not anything like your average Monopoly or Life. A notable game, which I really enjoyed playing, is called Sheriff of Nottingham in which your goal is to deliver various good to your market stand, while also smuggling various contrand so you can have the most gold at the end of the game. The game uses up to 5 players, with one player rotating around as the Sheriff/Inspector  each turn. In each turn there are multiple phases where you pick up to 5 cards which can be anything from contraband to legal goods, which in the next phase, you declare what cards you have, while also lying about them to get contraband past. The inspector then choosed if he wants to see the cards, where there is a penalty for either player depending how truthful the cards were. This then repeats until each player is the inspector twice, the winner is whoever has the most gold. The Grid is a very interesting club for me being that I have a great interest and love for board and tabletop games. This club is also a great choice if you wish to play and learn new, obscure and interesting board games that you’ve probably never seen before. There are also great social interactions in this club, because if you are interested in the topic of this club, you’ll most definitely be able to talk and relate to all the members of the club. The leaders of the club are great people too. The Grid meets every tuesday during club hours in NV 4-120.

For my second enrichment workshop i went to the museum of natural history. We were required to go there by our anthropology teacher, and we had to look at the hall of human origins. We had to come up with a quiz that asked questions pertaining the museum. Though it was a requirement to be there it was also a lot of fun. I had been to the museum before but i always forget just how big and fascinating it is. It seems that every time i go there, there are some new things to learn about. The hall of human origins was also a lot of fun. There were some cool interactive displays that showed the growth of the human population and some that told us how primates communicated. I also got to learn a lot of cool stuff about our ancient ancestors and the story of humans got to here. I learned things like there is only one hominid today and that is just us, the homo sapiens, i learned that the first stone tools popped up around 2.5 million years ago, though they were just sharp edged rocks they signaled that the basics of technological thought were beginning. There was also the RAP robot which creates original paintings using random decisions and responses to the environment. The visit was quite a bit of fun and was a good break from the day to day of rise and grind. For people who live in New York the museums have become this place where only tourists go, but i think more people should go these museum since they are pretty cool. We take these things for granted and completely forget just how incredible some of the museums we have are.  The museum was very interesting  and in many ways, helpful.

On Friday, September 15, my fellow classmate, Rob Raman, and I decided to attend a math workshop in preparation for our upcoming math test. We agreed that attending these workshops from time to time would be a useful studying tool because of how knowledgeable the tutors are. When we walked into the classroom there were two other Math 2003 students in the room. The tutor walked in and had specific instructions regarding the questions that we were asking him. He said that we cannot ask him specific homework questions and we cannot ask him questions that will be graded as a test or quiz. If we had a question pertaining to a test or quiz it was our job to come up with a similar question that would help us to understand the material. He went around asking people if they had questions. If you didn’t have any specific questions we were told to say, “pass”, and if we did he would review it on the board. We recently did a homework assignment that he had handed back to us and graded so I figured I would go over those questions. Our tutor was very knowledgeable about the subject and he helped me with the issue that I had. I was having trouble deciding when I should be using parenthesis versus brackets when giving the domains or certain equations. One of the students also had a question about derivatives. Our class was a class behind her class, so we didn’t get up to that topic. However, since I went to the class I was able to understand the basic principles of derivatives. I would definitely recommend my fellow freshman seminar students to attend a math workshop because it is such a great review for such an important subject. Even if you feel comfortable on your math skills right now, there is always room for improvement!

On September 29th the baseball team had its first intersquad game of the fall. The game took place at Randall’s island and started at 1 o’clock. We played a 12 inning game that lasted until about 5 o’clock. It was a very fun experience to finally get out of the basketball gym where the previous practices had been held and get back onto a real baseball field with my new teammates we arrived to the field via a team bus at 12 and went through our warmup routine for about 45 minutes and then headed towards the coaches to what the teams would be. After receiving what team we were on we went to our respective dugouts and took the field for the game. The main point of the game was to get all the pitchers into the game and throw against live hitters one more time before the fall season ended and evaluate where the team stood as far as line up choices and which kids trying out for the team would be taken. This led to an extremely long and drawn out game that went ten inning in order to accommodate all the pitchers who wanted to throw or the coaches wanted to see throw. While the scrimmage was not quite a game environment it was just nice to be out on the field building chemistry with my new teammates. I think the scrimmage was very helpful to the team in a few ways. One way being getting used to playing with new teammates, getting to know those teammates better and getting some practice in a situation as close to a real game as you can get without playing in one.