Freshman Seminar Fall 17 LC09

When a friend first told me to come with him to a Colgate-Palmolive corporate finance internship interest meeting, I laughed. An internship at Colgate was not entirely what I had in mind as an internship for the next few years, and the thought was really funny. Nonetheless, I decided an internship at the company would be interesting, and agreed to attend. The day of the internship was just as humorous: when people asked what company I was going to see, it was hard not to laugh at their reaction when I said something such as “Colgate, bro”. The presentation given by the company was pretty interesting, however. The environment and culture seemed very friendly, and a great place for a college student to intern. Ultimately, I learned a lot from that meeting, and maybe next year I’ll apply to Colgate-Palmolive. (We also got gift bags with toothpaste!!)

The time for my second math test has quickly arrived, and I knew that I was severely underprepared. I did as much studying as I could in the two days prior, but I knew it was still not enough. I was doing well in the class before this test, and so I did not want to do poorly at this point. Unfortunately, there was nothing I can do. I felt as though I can only sit and wait for the test to come, and ultimately fail. The day before, as I was studying with a classmate from my math class, he suggested we visit the SACC. I thought it’d be pointless, as I felt that understanding the material was relatively easy and that all I needed was practice. I also hated the idea of having someone explain something to me, and would much rather self-study. Visiting the SACC was ultimately a great help, however. After leaving, I knew I understood the concepts much more and felt much more prepared for my test.

When I was in high school, I remember eagerly joining a lot of clubs with a great deal of ambition and excitement. It ended up being a costly mistake: I wanted to be an active member of all of the clubs I joined, but I didn’t want it to affect my academic performance. As a result, I had to ditch a lot of the clubs. Coming into Baruch, I didn’t want to make the same mistake. I wanted to join a few clubs that I genuinely found interesting, and I wanted to stick to them. I first found out about the Finance and Economics Society through their Facebook page. I’m not entirely sure about what I want to do in the future, but I found finance and economics interesting enough to want to join a club dedicated to it. I begged a friend from my high school to come with me, and he eventually agreed.

The meeting itself started promptly during club hours. My friend and I walked in reluctantly: the room was already full of people, many of whom were dressed in business professional. Eventually, we settled in. The pizza was served and the presentation started. Most of the presentation talked about what the club itself does every week. Then, the speakers talked about two programs FES offered, the analyst program and the mentorship program. I was immediately interested in the mentorship program, as I thought it would be very helpful to have a mentor teach me about the field of finance, something I knew nothing about. I left the presentation eager to apply.

To fulfill my career blog post, I decided to go to STARR Career Center. At first I had no idea where to go, but my friend Mike was able to guide me. I wanted to go to STARR for a two main reasons. One was to look for any potential internship opportunities as I have a lot of spare time on my hands. The other reason was to get help organizing my resume while looking at example cover letters. When I walked in I was greeted by a man at the front desk, I told him was I was looking for and he was able to assist me. He gave me a guide that included resume formats. It included some specifics that I had no idea were beneficial in creating my resume. In terms of finding out more about internships, I was told to look on the STARR website frequently for opportunities. That night I spent some time readjusting the format of my resume to meet the requirements on the given guide. It took me about 1 hour, but it was time well spent because my resume was noticeably well organized. The next day I went online to look for some internships, however I was met with a frequent problem. Most internships required students in their sophomore year. This was kind of a bummer since I was becoming interested in working, however it wasn’t all too bad because I actually found some business related internships that I was able to currently apply for. For some of the applications I just had to link my resume that was saved on my computer. I still didn’t have a cover letter however, which some of the applications had to option for. I plan on going back to the STARR center to familiarize myself with the cover letter. Overall, I got what I wanted out of the career center and I will carry techniques learned into future applications.

My biggest dream of all dreams is to one day become the head coach of the New York Knicks lead them to multiple NBA championships. This dream may be very hard to attain, but I try to keep it alive as much as possible. I currently coach middle schoolers (Grades 6-8), every Wednesday, Thursday, and Sunday for two hours each class. Each class is a different grade, consisting of 20-25 kids each class. My main way of coaching them is to have them play full court scrimmages against each other. Drills are obviously important too and thats how each class starts but my belief is that there is no better way to learn than experience. As they their scrimmages, I call out each player for what they are doing wrong. For example, if I call a foul on someone and he does not understand the call, I explain it to him so he knows not to do that in the future. Also, setting an illegal/moving screen is something that I have to call them out for a lot. I see a lot of them even after a short time progressing, and understanding the game more each time they come out. Drills to me only focuses on a specific thing, while scrimmaging focuses on everything. Not just being able to play with teammates, or playing full court games, but also understanding the atmosphere of the game. I put on the scoreboard with a designated time for each game. So there are buzzer beaters and late game fouling. You cannot do drills on how to handle late game moments, you could only practice those moments that win and lose you the game through experience. Not only are my players learning, but I am learning. Not just how to be a better coach, but also how to communicate with players and help them get better. Hopefully one day I will be the Head Coach of the New York Knicks, but for now, as an 18 year old, I am happy with coaching middle schoolers.

For my third and last blog post I went to the starr career center. The starr career center is located in the second floor of the Newman vertical campus for those who don’t know. I went there to get help in making my resume. Making my resume is hard because I feel like I haven’t done much yet. I graduated a year early and have not interned or worked anywhere yet so I didn’t know what to put on my resume. Also it being our first semester I don’t have a gpa to put into my resume either.
At the starr career center I talked to one of the workers at the front desk. I felt bad because I felt like I was wasting his time. I didn’t really know what to ask him since I didn’t even have a draft resume. After some frustration he finally just gave me a resume pamphlet.
In the resume pamphlet I learned the basic rules of a resume such as it being one page, font size being between 10 and 12 and margins being from ½ inch to 1 inch adjusted to make your information fit neatly. I also learned recruiters spend on average 5 to 7 seconds looking at resumes. Also that 76% percent of resumes are discarded for unprofessional email addresses, spelling error and/or poor formatting. The pamphlet goes in depth into basically every part of the resume i need to know and previously did not. Again it shows what sections your resume should be divided into and also what not to include in your resume. All in all the pamphlet basically is 30 pages of what exactly i should and should not do in my resume which will be extremely helpful when i apply for internships in the future.

This picture is me in the Chabad House on Bowery Ave. Ony of my goals coming into college was to maintain and improve my jewish identity. It’s not easy to constantly be affiliated everyday while doing college work at the same time. However, it is something I’m am getting used to balancing. Every Monday and Wednesday, I go to a Judaism class. The main activity we do in this class is learning the Talmud. The Talmud is considered to be the oral bible that was passed down from generation to generation from moses, and only recorded down on paper around 200-500 C.E. When learning the talmud and reading all the different rabbis that have different opinions on different topics, I feel like a part of something larger. I feel like I’m tracing my identity nearly 2000 years ago. The Talmud consists of conversation between many rabbis and their opinions on different laws in Judaism. They derive their proofs from the bible and earlier rabbis who lived in the mishnaic times. In order to learn the Talmud, you have to constantly be focused and be analytical while asking questions.

In our class we first have a one on one group work for about an hour and then it develops into a class where the rabbi is giving the lesson. Its emphasizes to first have one one one group work because it’s important to toil and struggle with the aramaic text. We wouldn’t learn as well if it was in a class setting the whole time. By doing this, we will soon be able to read and translate the Talmud ourselves, without the help of a rabbi.

Once we learn what the Talmud is teaching us and we develop questions, we go on to medieval commentaries on the Talmud which is very abstract and requires constant attention. Then we we go into class time. Class time is very intriguing because we always diverge from the topic and talk about questions that are practical to today’s everyday life. The learning, including the group study and the class is an hour and a half long. After the class, we say the evening prayer called maariv. In it, we are are thankful to God for all the amazing things he grants us in our life. The night, or darkness in general, symbolizes fear, evil, and doubts. In the evening service however, we proclaim the we are faithful in God despite all the seeming dark things in our lives that hold us back. We proclaim that God is one with everything and he can be seen in everything, even in the darkness.

After, that Chabad gives us dinner which varies from week to week. One week it can be sandwiches and another week it can be wings. One time they gave us sliders, barley and salad which seemed random but it was delicious. During dinner we talk about many things. Sometimes we talked about what we learned in the previous hour and a half. We often talk about sports or any current events that occur at the time.

I am extremely appreciative of the Chabad that they provide us with Jewish learning and an amazing dinner that comes after the learning

Going to Baruch, it is a worry of mine which job I will land when coming out of college. I also never really knew and I still don’t know exactly what I want to do when I’m older. At Baruch college, the Starr Career development center provides clarity in the future. My friend told me to go to the Starr but I didn’t want to because I didn’t think it would help. I was very stubborn about the situation but I nevertheless decided to go to the Starr and schedule a meeting with a peer representative. They were very accommodating in terms of scheduling a meeting which I am grateful for. Right before the meeting, I was thinking of how pointless it really is as a freshman in college to be thinking about my career now, especially because I am unsure of exactly what I want to commit myself to. However, once I started my appointment , I suddenly had a feeling of comfort and assurance that everything will be okay. The lady told me that it is totally normal to not know what I want to do when I’m older, especially as a freshman. She did express to me the importance in just brainstorming what I’m interested in and what really catches my attention. We started to brainstorm and I came to the conclusion that I’m interested in business of some sort. I still haven’t decided exactly what type of business I want to go into, but she provided me with a foundation to base my career on. Then, she suggested that I start to build my resume which I was never interested in doing. She said that even if I won’t be using it this year, it’s good to start now and I can always add more to it. She reiterated to me that most if not all internships will only hire me if I have a resume and a history with work ethic.

 

The student Academic Consulting Center or better known as the SACC has been a very useful resource for me thus far in my education career here at Baruch. I personally have always struggled with math but baruch’s free math tutoring program has provided me with aid in achieving the grades that I am targeting. I recently went to the SACC many times for a math test. Scheduling the appointment was very easy and there were a lot of time slots available as well as many different peer tutors. I went to the SACC to learn derivatives and limits for my upcoming test. With my math teacher not being effective in teaching the material, the SACC taught me exactly what I need to know for the test and how to approach each problem step by step. SACC is not only known to be helpful to the students, but also is known for their academic integrity. I found out at the SACC that it is prohibited for them to do your homework with you. At first, I was frustrated about that, but the more I thought about it, the happier I became because it made me feel secure. It was a satisfying feeling knowing that the SACC is a legitimate peer tutoring program that values academic integrity.

The SACC also provided my friends and me a free studying space to study for our test without a peer tutor. This was significant in terms of our advancement with the material because it allowed us to go over the material amongst ourselves and not having to rely on the teacher to explain or walk us through the steps. When leaving the SACC, the people at the front desk gave me a nice smile goodbye and told me to have a good day. The SACC is more than just  a peer tutoring program. The SACC is a comfortable place where I can feel I have dignity in admitting that I need help with math.

 

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On Thursday, November 16th, 2017, I went to the Starr Career Center to fulfill my last blog post. I mainly went to look at some internship opportunities that they might have, and because I didn’t really know where else to go to do this blog post. When I went to the career center, I wasn’t really sure exactly what to do or where to go. I was informed that they had internship opportunities for different companies, both big and small. Going in, I had this blog post in mind when trying to inquire about their opportunities for internships. I figured that they would have a few since the whole idea of the career center is to work on jobs and your career path. I visited for internships in particular because I knew that they are good for many reasons, such as to build a better resume, develop networking with outside people and companies, increased opportunities for employment with that same company after graduation, and overall just to gain experience and get your name out there. The career center let me know that I could check for more internship opportunities on starr search’s website, attend internship and career fairs and seminars, and to network with professionals and professors that have some experience in specific fields. I’ve been thinking recently about doing an internship later in my college career, possibly with some sort of financial or business related company. In doing so, I would like to get some experience in the field and to possibly get a good job at the same place. Using this experience could help me to get further in life and make more money. Going to the starr career center more in the future could help me get these internships in order to get more experience for a good job.