m.tur – Freshman Seminar Fall 17 LC06

Small Talk: It’s a BIG Deal — Career Blog

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.

Mooncake

It was on Thursday the 5th and I attended an event at a club where we had to make our own mooncakes. There were different flavors. First, we played a game where each person says the falling number and when a number is a multiple of 5 or 8 they would have to clap. For example, 10,15,16, etc. They had to clap. If they mess up, then they had to answer questions. They then went over the background information behind the mooncakes. They even said how you say mooncake in Chinese, we had to repeat multiple times until we get it correct. After that, they showed us a video multiple times on how a mooncake is made until they thought we were going to be comfortable making them. I was not sure if I was able to eat them because I am vegetarian so I didn’t eat them, but I sure had fun making them. They gave us two different types of dough to choose from and three different fillings to choose from. The fillings were chocolate, green tea, and yolk. I was randomly given one, so I just used it. They gave us one glove to work from because there were a lot of people and not enough gloves that made it even harder to turn it into a close to a perfect sphere. A guy next to me gave up because his filling which was chocolate kept coming out of the dough. Thankfully mine wasn’t chocolate, so it was easier to cover the filling with the dough. At the end, after I was done, I gave it to someone else to eat it and they said it was good, but I am pretty sure it wasn’t because I messed up so many times. As a result, I realize that I am not a good cook and had a lot of fun, which added to one of my best experience on the campus.

Academic Blog

For my Academic Blog, I decided why not make the best of this opportunity, by getting help in math and at the same time I will get the blog done. I registered for it and was happy to learn more and because this was my first time going there, I was excited. It took place on Saturday the 9th of September from 10am to 12pm. When I woke up that day I had forgotten that I had to go because usually on Saturdays I wake up late. I had finally realized and so had to rush everything because it takes one hour to get there. Once I left my house, I thought the day will get better but it only got worse.

As I took the first train, there was a lot of train traffic so the train kept stopping, but I was happy that I got off the train by 9:30 because I thought I would never make it to the stop. But that wasn’t the worst. As I went down the stairs to catch the next train I realize, they blocked it from going to the station. So when I asked the workers, they said I have to take the bus(shuttle) for that train, but the problem with that was that it didn’t stop where I needed to get off, it stopped near but that near was still far. So I left the station and decided to turn on my maps and see what I can do, as I did that, I realized it’s 9:40 already and that I only have 20 minutes to get there. So I decided to walk to college from West 4th street, which was a lot but it’s better than waiting for transportation. It was about 22 streets, but I somehow made it there by 10:10 and the class had already started but thankfully they let me go in.

The instructor was good at explaining the concepts thoroughly, which helped me a lot. He went over Limits and Continuity that we were working on in class, so it made my homework even easier to understand and do. After the two hours I felt like I can take a test on limits and continuity right now and get an A on it. After I was done with it, again the transportation got me tight. I had to change up to 5 trains just to come home because many trains were following another route. So for me this day was when I learned a lot, whether it be math or how to come back home or go to college, when trains stop commuting.