Freshman Seminar Fall 17 LC06

On October 25th, I attended the Finance 101 career workshop.  I decided to attend the workshop because I changed my mind to major in finance instead of accounting. However, still somewhat undecided.  I wanted to know more about the career path as a finance major student. During the workshop, they talked about what you can be as a finance major. For example, a banker which what I intend to be or a stockbroker as I have some interest in stocks. Having strong communications to develop and to maintain relationships between customers is crucial in the field of finance. However, I am still in that process of developing fluent public speaking skills. I hope next semester’s communication class will be beneficial toward it. The workshop was helpful in many ways. Beside providing significant information about the career as a finance major, there were also tips on interviews, resume writings such as cover letter and some insights from professionals finance major field workers. Furthermore, since most finance jobs are office oriented, the instructor also discuss the layouts of different sections of offices. For instance, there are sections for technology, information organization, record keeping and filing, just to name a few. I knew some of these office layouts as I had a lot of experience as office workers. I worked as office assistant for a long time and still are. After the workshop, it was beneficial as it introduced me the environment of a finance worker and cleared some misunderstandings.

I took the Focus-2 Exam for my Career Blog. I initially went to a career workshop for resume writing, however, that did not work out for me. In the Focus-2 Exam there were 5 assignments that you took in order to get help with which career you should choose.

I enjoyed completing the personality, I felt that it asked me questions that I was able to easily answer about myself. I chose Independence, helping others, and influence for the first part. My results were that You focus your attention on practical issues and look at the realities of a situation.,You make decisions using logic as opposed to your feelings. I feel that this test did a great job of defining my personality because a lot of these are similar to my personality. Then later they gave me a list, Examples of such occupations can be found in fields such as engineering, applied technologies, business administration, law enforcement, production andconstruction, professions I should choose. It actually told me what I wanted to do.

The work interest test I had a hard time completing because I think I was not even sure about the answers. The good thing is that I actually began thinking about which kind of environment I would like to work in. There were questions like, designing theatre stage sets, lighting and special effects for plays or TV shows? And this relates back to my theatre class. However, I wouldn’t be interested in a field of that sort. After this test I actually started to wonder, which type of working environment I prefer.

Overall, the Focus-2 Exam for me personally helped out. It is helping me choose a career for the future.  It also gave the number of annual income as well as the skill-set required. It got actually thinking about my career and how so many majors can go in different ways.     

During the weekend I had to complete a career related blog spot but i didn’t go to any career events because of bad organization of time and laziness. So, instead i chose  to complete the focus 2 assessment that is related to the career blog.  When i enter this website i see 5 sections that i needed to complete and each sections have its own interesting part. It starts with your own interest and for most of them i picked 3 stars out of 5 stars because i don’t really know what i like to do and almost none of them interests me but i have to answer all these questions. While i was doing the survey i found this question that is very interesting which something like are you interested in doing gardening work, and i put a 4 star into that question because i m very interested in flower and such which interests me. Besides this i didn’t find much interesting and entertaining questions in the focus 2 assessment and the total time that took me to complete all 5 of these assessments was only about 20 minutes and it is basically a survey to categorized you into your job interest. Overall the survey was OK and i like it because it helped me complete my career blog that i have no idea how to complete it.

I attended a workshop Small Talk: It’s a BIG Deal presented by Ellen Stein on November 8th.This was a workshop that really benefited me to become more confident to socialize. Usually when it’s a lot of people, I don’t like to talk to strangers. This workshop helped me understand how we can communicate better with people. Sometimes the problem can be that you don’t know what to say to them, she went over that too. First she came around and introduced us and expected us to introduce ourselves. As she was coming around, I was confused on why is she coming to everyone but when she came to me, I was like wow, I was not expecting this kind of gesture. Especially my name, when I told her my name she asked me again because she was not getting my name right, so from there I was more confident in that she actually wanted to know our names and not doing it to just do it. She gave us a worksheet which we had to fill out by putting the name of which relates to the statement. So we had to ask the people in the room and find someone that has similar answer to the question or statement. Then we went over basic tips such as saying hello, remembering the person’s name your taking to, etc. Then she gave us some scenarios and asked us to talk to our group on how would we start the conversation according to the situation. She asked for our opinion on how would we decide on who to talk to without knowing the person. Everyone then shared their responses and we commented on them. At last she showed us a demo with a volunteer student. She was being interviewed by the student and they had to show us a good representation of what the conversation should be when you go for an interview. This workshop was only for 2 hours but showed a lot then 2-hour worth, I can use all the tips and gestures in future that can help me get a good job and extend my connections with people. All of this will only help me, so it was a fun and amazing experience. Also I got to meet new people that I would have never gotten a chance to meet or know if it weren’t for this workshop.

On November 8 I was able to attend the workshop Small Talk: It’s a BIG Deal presented by Ellen Stein. This topic seemed very interesting for me, because every day I encounter hundreds of people, but often I find myself being silent for days. Now, everyone is so tied with technology, especially phones, that this is getting on the way of communicating with other people. So, I wanted to change this situation at least for myself. And this workshop became very useful in doing so.

In the very beginning Ellen personally greeted every person in the room and introduced herself, which was unexpected for me. I understand the meaning behind this gesture of her, but for some reason it felt too theatrical. During the workshop we were able to discuss topics like body language, memorizing techniques as well as appropriate topics to use in the conversation. Ellen engaged with the audience by improvising the work meeting conversation with one of the students. I liked that she showed us what she was talking about. Even though this information was not new, I refreshed my memories and got some inspiration to have more conversations with people.

Because of this inspiration I decided to challenge myself: every day for five days talk to someone I have never talked to (not including “hello” and “bye”). And I did complete this challenge, which was ton of fun. Not only I met cool people, but also it opened my eyes on how much opportunities are out there. Every person you meet has so much to offer: friendship, love, support, or at least a piece of gum. The only thing that is needed from us is to say hi to new people. Amazing life truly starts from the small talk.

On Oct 25th, my friend and I attended a Starr Career Development Center workshop called Finance 101. The reason for why I chose this workshop is just because I was unclear about my future at Baruch. In other words, I did not know which major should I choose, finance or accounting? As we known, Baruch is a famous business school, but before joining this community, I was really interested in the scientific study, like chemical engineering. When I first walked into school, I felt that I was surrounded by the strong business atmosphere and being integrated into that. Thus, I changed my mind, so I might major in finance or accounting but I don’t know which one is a better option.

After this workshop, I decided to choose finance as my major in Baruch. The presenter informed us on the different sectors in finance. I learn for the first time that in an office job, it is categorized into the front office, middle office, and back office. The front office could be recognized as the face of the company, it is mostly the sales representatives and employees who deal with clients. The middle office manages risk, calculates profits and losses and often is in charge of information technology. The back office is the people that are in charge of settlements, clearances, record maintenance, regulatory compliance, accounting and IT services. We also learned about the different sectors in finance. After she introduced all the different kinds of finance jobs, I am interested most in Financial analysts because it earns the highest level of salary even at the entry level.