Month: September 2017

Hey everyone! Last Thursday, I attended an ALPFA meeting, well workshop. It was one of their many workshops about career development and resume building. This first workshop’s main focus was resume building and how to stand out in a pool of applicants when applying to any job. At first, we just talked about the building blocks of any resume because as one of the workshop mentors, and probably lots of other people, said “A well written resume goes a long way.” Then, we discussed how to improve an existing resume and what skills should be added and which shouldn’t. After the resume portion, we moved on to discussing leadership and networking, two very important things in college and in life.

I thought this workshop was very interesting and am glad I attended it because it was beneficial and educational. Throughout my high school years, I’ve worked in many places and been a part of many programs and all I would do is ignorantly cram them all into my resume but now I know better than just throwing different things on there. I think ALPFA is going to be a great tool in building my career throughout my college years and in the future. 

 

Hello guys, so for this blog post I decided to get to know some of the student life over at Baruch by visiting a club. The club I decided to visit, most relevant to my major(Finance) as well, was the Finance & Economics Society Club, also known as FES. Overall, I found the club to an amazing one in doing what it sets out to do. During this club meeting the administrators were giving examples of how we could get involved. They gave examples of how to get involved and receive all the clubs’ benefits although you may be extremely busy as well as explain how you can give the club all  your efforts and be a truly dedicated member, as some of the administrators were. Right from the beginning I was able to tell how serious the club was and how much time a member would have to put aside to be involved in it. They explained how there would be weekly workshops that, no matter which type of member you were, you would have to attend at least 6. In addition to these workshops we would have to do assignments as well and possibly participate in competitions and so on.

After the presenters had gone over what was to be expected and required by each club member, they then told us about some of their experiences in the club, I personally found this part to be the most informative and it unfortunately dissuaded me from joining the club. Since they talked about what they had done in their history with the club I was able to see that this club was more focused on building each one of its members up for a professional career rather than teaching you specific topics that regard finance such as real-estate investments, markets, the economy, etc. This would definitely be more of an interest to me because it would be something that I can apply to my future and I would then, most definitely, be dedicated to this club.

As I presented to our class in Communication, I am working to become an airline pilot after graduating from Baruch and majoring in finance as a backup for having knowledge of how I should invest my money. With these goals that I have in mind, a professional career at Goldman Sachs for example, wouldn’t help me too much.

Although I probably will not be joining this club because of busy schedule which includes academics as well as piloting lessons, I definitely do not think others should shoot it down right away. I was surprised as to how friendly and close everyone in this club was despite the size if the club and the professional environment that the members are placed in much of the time. I can definitely see how joining this club could be a great way to settle into college as a freshman, meet new people, and make connections that can last and guide you to a professional career. In conclusion, I wouldn’t consider my visit to check out this club as a waste of time, it was definitely educational and made me think more of where I want to go after college and if this would fit my goals. Moreover, I think this club would be a great experience for so many people despite its requirements and my decision not to look further into it.

Last Thursday, my (new) friend Sarita and I went to the Latina Heritage club. At first I didn’t know what club I wanted to join for two reasons. The first reason why was because I was nervous about finding a group of people I could blend in with. When it came to clubs I couldn’t shake the thought of how awkward it would be if I walked into any random club that I had no direct connection to. It’s that same feeling you get when you walk into a new school, full of kids that you do not know, or when you find yourself in a new country where they speak a foreign language (this ,although, is an exaggeration). In high school, I was always very outgoing and was friends with all the people in my grade, so joining a club was never intimidating. Regardless of the club I joined, I knew that I had some friends in it. College is completely different. You have to put yourself out there and create relationships with new people. Secondly I wanted to choose the right club to go to. Coming into Baruch I didn’t really know what my interests and hobbies were. Growing up I never really had any unique talents or hobbies but that is something I wanted to change when I came to college. I think that college is the time for a person to find out what they really like and what really interests them.

Going to the Latina Heritage club wasn’t a planned decision. I was following my daily Thursday routine and when I went up to the second floor, I saw a big group of people and heard loud music. I figured I might as well have stopped by to see what was going on and it seemed pretty cool. I peaked my head in and they seemed to be having a ton of fun. They were listening to music that sounded like modern hip-hip, my favorite genre, but I became even more intrigued because when I could hear the lyrics were in spanish. After walking in I noticed myself enjoying the atmosphere and presence of people I had just joined. The fact that the music was in a different language made it even more fun to listen too, and I found it much easier to loosen up to and dance to like everyone was already doing. I admittedly didn’t stay for a long time but for the time I did I had a great time.

Like I stated earlier I didn’t want to walk into a club and feel obligated to continue through with showing up to the club, and I stand by that statement. I can’t say that I will ever return but I am surely glad that I joined for the day. It was a good experience in doing things outside of my comfort zone, and who is to say that I wont try it again one day. This was overall a great experience!

     How many of you guys have asked yourselves “Why do we have blocks and what is the point of them?” these were the questions I would ask myself my first few days at Baruch. Why are we going to every single class together with the same exact people? Are we in middle school? However, on Labor Day weekend when I went on a trip to Pennsylvania with my team, Baruch Women’s Volleyball team, to the Desales tournament, I finally understood the point of these blocks. The point is not to force us into liking each other, but to enable us to become friends and build connections with others that we never would have thought we would have in the first place.

     That Labor Day weekend was filled a bundle of emotions: joy, defeat, and frustration. We left the tournament with a record of 3:1, losses to win. On Friday, we played Rutgers-Camden and Washington College, which we lost both. But the Washington game was a major improvement from our first game against Rutgers. The next day we played Gwynedd Mercy and won and Desales and lost. Even though we had 3 losses, we were able to learn and progress from them and it showed through every game we played next. Being able to go through these experiences together has brought everyone on the team closer together. We were also able to bond outside of the tournament like in the van ride to there and back, staying overnight at the hotel room, and grabbing something to eat. We were able to get to know each other outside volleyball.

     There are a lot of different types of personalities on my team, from shy and soft spoken to loud and aggressive, but we are all brought together by this one common interest, volleyball. During this trip, I was able to learn who the jokesters were, what people’s food preferences are, and who eats a lot or a little. My teammates were also able to learn a little bit about me. I became closer with people I didn’t expect.

     Like volleyball, the people on our block were put together for something that we have in common, whether that is the level of classes, or other reasons. From my first few days at Baruch, I have definitely witnessed a change, from people expressing their opinions on not being able to make friends outside of our block to people starting to get more comfortable with each other, some relationships stronger than others. We are experiencing what I believe is why we were put into these blocks in the first place to make these connections and bonds with others that we would not gotten to know if it were not for these blocks.

Last Thursday, I attended UCLA’s first general interest meeting. During convocation day, I thought UCLA was a club about kids trying to apply to UCLA. On the first day of school, my friend Nicole Pung introduced me to the whole USG Marketing Team in which I joined. Inside the marketing team, a few of the members introduced me to UCLA. They told me it stood for “United Chinese Language Association.” I am a person who loves to make friend, eat food, and respect my culture; so I thought to myself ‘this club seems right for me’. My friends from UCLA told me I can hang out at their club room ever since before the first GIM happened. Everyday after class or in-between classes, I would go to the third floor of the Newman Vertical Campus and chill with the rest of the club members. It has been a really enjoyable experience. On the first GIM, there was a surprising around 50-60 kids that showed up. The room was so packed and I had to sit on the floor closer to the front. The club leaders and board members all introduced themselves and their role in the club. While looking at this, I compared this experience to my past experiences in high school. From the clubs I go to in high school, it wasn’t really organized. Everything seemed really out of place; basically a huge mess. The club leaders were able to keep all 50-60 of us interested in the club. They have an agenda and a series of ice breakers and games that some of the club participated in. As you can see in the picture above, I played a game called ‘Questions’ which is basically two teams battling against each other about a topic. In order to win, you have to keep asking relevant questions. If you hesitate or don’t know what to ask, you are out. After the series of games, there were huge boxes and plates of food that they bought from a nearby Chinese restaurant. All 50-60 of us lined up and got food. There was beef, chicken, lo mein, chow fun, and white rice. Like the brown FRO guy that filled in for Aitsana said the week before, all the ‘free food’ are technically not ‘free’. It comes from our $250 student activities fee. In my mind I have to take advantage of all the ‘free’ things that come available to me. UCLA isn’t just a club, it feels like a family. There is a Chinese Learning Program coming up this Tuesday at 12:30-2:30. Unfortunately I won’t be able to attend because of FRO, but there are things I still look forward to in this club.

Other Clubs I joined: USG, ESA, Lexicon

At the end of welcome week the Baruch undergraduate Student government hosted a loft party in the multi-purpose room. The party was in celebration of the end of welcome week. There was Burgers and fries with tons of drinks. The room was filled with students from every class and major. There was giant board games throughout the room with the DJ spinning in the middle of the room. There was people playing giant Jenga, chess and connect four just to name a few. People were dancing and having a good time sharing good vibes. It was kinda of awkward that people were partying with their backpacks on, it was definitely funny to watch. I feel like this is the only reason why I kinda wish I went outside of NYC for college because we don’t parties like all my other friends do at their state schools. But at the same time partying is literally all that one can do in the middle of nowhere so I feel like it’ll get old pretty quick and I’ll miss NYC in no time.

   I noticed there definitely a ton of Bearcat pride at the party and everywhere I looked there was something happening. This is the first time I actually say people being kinda social with each other and making an effort to make new friends at Baruch. since Baruch is a commuter school it has been kinda of difficult to make friends since everyone just goes to class and heads home or work. Therefore it’s super nice that USG is trying their best to create chances for students to connect. Overall it was an interesting experience and I’m excited to see what Baruch has to bring to the table next.

-ANGEL (Hanjing) Zheng

 

 

Last Thursday, I went to a club meeting that I had been interested in before college even started. I heard amazing things about this club from my classmates from high school who knew club members. I went to Baruch’s South Asian Student Association first general interest meeting! The executive board members, along with their other dedicated members, were very warm, welcoming and inviting. They made it a very comfortable environment to mingle in. The president, Alvin, spoke about what this club is all about, introduced the club’s executive board members and what they are planning to do throughout the year. Right after that, we played the ice-breaker game ‘Move Your Butt’ so that we could get to know a little bit about everyone, just like how we did during Convocation Day. During the game, I felt so shy when I was the last one standing. I did not feel this way on Convocation Day however, I felt super reserved and clueless when it was my turn. Maybe it was because I was in a room with other Baruch students that I did not know and that were older than me. Anyways, after playing the game, they served us some awesome chaat. Chaat is an indian savory snack that has yogurt and different types of sauces on it. Chaat is usually served by vendors on the streets of India. The purpose of serving us chaat was because their event was called have a “Chit-Chaat”, which I thought was very clever. The rest of the meeting, everyone just socialized with one another. I met two older girls that live in my town, East Meadow, on Long Island. One of the girls is a sophomore and the other girl is a junior. It was nice to see them after a long time. We talked about their daily commute. As they were telling me about their commute, I felt thankful that I dorm because the daily commute would be horrible. They told me how it takes them about three hours to commute back and forth from East Meadow, to the city and then back. Interestingly enough, they both are executive board members, which was pretty cool. At the club meeting, I even made new two friends. Their names are Sahil and Raf. We were discussing our schedules, the other clubs we were interested in, our intended majors and why we chose Baruch over all the other colleges that we got accepted to. The three of us now have each other on snapchat and follow each other on instagram. I see myself staying as an active member of this club. I even told Alvin, the president, how I am interested in being a Freshman Representative for this club. Hopefully I get the position if I apply. Overall, I had a good time at SASA’s first general interest meeting and I am looking forward to the next meeting.

Hello, the club I decided to go to this Thursday was VSA. VSA Also known as Vietnamese Student Association, they are very friendly, informative, and warm people. You do not need to be Viet in order to join, in matter of fact majority of the people in the club isn’t even Viet. The workshop they had was called “DIY Summer rolls and language class” aka “Journey to Vietnam with VSA”. It was a fun experience I learned how to make summer rolls and how to order some common food in viet. Some small catch phrases you can “impress” your waiters when ordering. What was cool and helpful, was they provided all the ingredients and supplies for us.

What wasn’t cool is since I am a germophob I hate that they didn’t ask us to wash our hands before we started the process of making the summer rolls. The whole time I was thinking of all the germs surrounding my poorly created summer roll. You might be wondering how do you make a summer roll. Well the ingredients are and not limited to: rice paper, vermicelli, lettuce, and some form of meat(which they had pork and shrimp). They provided sauce which was a combination of sesame oil and peanut sauce.

I believe this event was not a waste of my time, it was very fun and it was interesting to learn how to make something new and common viet food phrases. They introduced us to simple viet words such as thank you and your welcome. It was interesting to know that when you are saying thank you to people, depending who you are saying it to you add another word. If you saying it to an uncle you’ll say cam on chu. They taught us simple phrases for food and the pronunciations, it was funny how Ben and another club member was teaching us how to pronounce it properly. They were funny and made jokes along the way.

I am very excited that I gone, because  I didn’t go alone rather I went with a group of friends and with my group of friends we teamed up on a game of matching Viet words we have learned to pictures. I’ll admit we kind of cheated but still legal, my friend was actually half Vietnamese, but in defense he doesn’t speak Vietnamese but speaks Chao Zhou. We were first finish and first to match it and get everything correct. Which we all won Baked by Melissa cupcakes. I was happy because I’ve never tried Baked by Melissa Cupcakes before.

I am happy to have went to this club and meet some great people like James, Ruthie, Ben, and other members. They are really nice and help me get to know more about the club. I am looking forward to going to more events and learn more about Vietnamese culture.