Freshman Seminar Fall 17 LC10

Month: September 2017

Engaging and Active, Baruch HKC showed its own identity — By Wesley Chen

There were a lot of general interest meetings taking place last Thursday, and I decided to take part of Hong Kong Culture Club. When I told my father about this interest, he said: “why would you join that club?”

“Well,” I replied, “why don’t I join and find out?”

Interesting, however, was the fact that there were some people of other ethnicities other than Chinese joined the club as well. Hmm, there must be something captivating about this club. Logically, I sat there and hoped that I could find the uniqueness of the club.

The meeting apparently was very well planned and, to everyone’s delight, Asian fusion was served. During the meeting, hosts, including the club president, treasury and other members, were incredibly charming. Although some of the aforementioned students who were not of any Asian ethnicities didn’t understand either Cantonese, the dialect used in Hong Kong and areas around it, and Mandarin, the official language of China, they gave their best shot and ramped up the environment inside the room.

In the meeting, with the charming blend of friendliness and warmth, club executives introduced to us about the normal activities and what to be expected if we were to join the club: discussions about culture and customs in Hong Kong, hangouts over the weekend or holiday, and even chances to taste the Asian dishes in New York.

Of course, conventionally, new members should get to know each other. Club executives planned an effective ice-breaker session for us: they divided us into different groups and let us play games to know each other. Unsurprisingly, with the help of the session, I managed to familiarize myself better with the Baruch culture and some of the people, I also found that there were many people who came from the very same city that I lived in for most of my life!This image requires alt text, but the alt text is currently blank. Either add alt text or mark the image as decorative.

My UCLA Meeting Experience

On September 7th, I took part in the UCLA GIM #2 (United Chinese Language Association General Interest Meeting) and I plan to join the club. Since there were so many people in the room, there wasn’t enough seats for everyone. I was one of the people that sat on the floor. The meeting started with the purpose of the club, which was the information section of the meeting and then we moved on to the games or “ice breakers”.

The games were very enjoyable. We played Google Feud in which it was the left group versus the right group. I was part of the group on the right. Google Feud was difficult and some of the answers were surprising (well not surprising, but rather made me question popular searches) because some of the answers were very idiotic or would make you say: “What? Why?”. One round was that my group had to solve “trump _” and the answer to the blank were mainly about President Trump, which was a bit funny because everyone was trying to name the answers, such as “trump son”, “trump wife”, or “trump fake news”. A few people complained in a lighthearted manner that it wasn’t fair that we got an easy one, but they did get “powdered _” as one of their rounds. Another game we played was Zoom and in this game an image is zoomed to a portion and you must guess what the actual image is. There were Timberland boots, men’s boxers, a Poland Spring Bottle, and other images.

I plan to get involved by going to the meetings and participating in some of the events, like the Chinese New Year celebration. We took a group photo, which is on their Facebook; and free food was given, which a lot of people lined up for.

UCLA

I went the to first general interest meeting for the club, UCLA, which stands for United Chinese Language Association. While I was waiting for the meeting to start, I was greeted by one of the VP of the club. She was very friendly which made me feel welcomed. The moment I stepped inside the room, I was shocked by the number of people that came to the meeting. The room was packed and there weren’t enough chairs for everyone. More than half of the people have to either sit on the floor or stand. During the meeting, I got the opportunity to learn more about UCLA and the interactive games played were very interesting and fun. We played three games in total. The first game we played we can only answer a question with a question. If we make a statement then we lose.  In the second game, it’s basically draw something. We were divided into two groups, one person from each group go up to the board and draw. Whichever group guessed it first is the winner. The last game involved two players, one with headphone on with music blasting and the other player have to say the phrase on the card. The player with the headphone on have to guess what the phrase is. After the introduction and games, food were offered to us. But the line for food was so long, so I didn’t wait on line and left.

The environment is chill and friendly, therefore, I believe this will be a great opportunity for me to meet more people and make new friends. I will definitely go to the following events host by UCLA. There will be a Lantern Making Workshop on Tuesday. I really want to go and learn how to make a lantern, unfortunately, I have class so I will not be able to make it to this event.

This is the only picture that shows my face so…yeah!

FRO BLOG – KRYSTAL BU

Me and my friends joined the accounting club last Thursday because we were trying to find out if the club will really help us. Although we are all freshmen and seems there are a long way to go, but time actually flashes really fast, so we want to quickly get closer to our future career. At the beginning we played a ice breaker game and I thought all the president, leaders, and other staff members are really kind and helpful.After the game, the president showed us a PowerPoint basically introduced how accounting club works and what we need to do. They said there will be companies coming for speech and giving advices, we will have our own mocking interview, and we can work together to modify our resume. And I think all of these are really helpful so I decided to become a member of the accounting club.

I started this internship two weeks ago because I want to learn at least some basic knowledges about my career like what accountants usually do and how they communicate with their customers. My guidance is really nice and helpful. She gives me a lot of advices and teaches me step by step. As for today, she tough me how to use QuickBook to record, calculate, and manage databases and taxation for companies. To examine how much I learned and make sure I really get it, my guidance gave me a company’s materials and let me finish regulating them. Unexpectedly, I finished pretty good without mistakes. Although the work is kind of boring and made me tired, I felt pretty satisfied and confident after that. So, maybe I can really see accountant as my future career.

Today, me and my friends went to the Museum of Modern Art. As an interest, I was leaning painting since 7, so I really enjoy these art things. There are a lot of famous paintings and creative artifacts which really made me stand there for a while because I was trying to get the point of why the creator made these. And also there was an area that we can actually make something by ourself which I think is really fun because we can immediately create a structure or draw a abstract painting by that moment’s feeling. And sometimes that is how art is created.

MO MATH

Recently I visited MO Math, also known as the Museum of Mathematics. It is located in New York City and is just about a three to five minute walk from Baruch College. This museum obviously is about math, but is actually way more interesting than the typical museum of just facts. This museum is an interactive museum. As you walk throughout the museum, there are many exhibits that you can choose from to learn about. There are actually a lot of young children there as well because the museum is so much fun. I typically don’t find museums to be all that interesting but I did enjoy going to this museum. My favorite subject has always been math and to go to a museum all about my favorite subject was pretty cool. Also, I feel that I am pretty good at math, but going to this museum showed me there is a lot I don’t know about, and so much I would want to know about.

As you can see from the picture I posted, my favorite exhibit was the chair. I was fascinated that the museum could even make sitting in a chair fun. I think that was the most popular exhibit there because it was so much fun. Everyone in the museum had a smile on there face, even the workers. Laughter filled the air rather than whispers. I definitely recommend going to this museum to anyone, and I would even go back again.

Visiting the Museum of Mathematics has assisted me during my first seminar at Baruch. I am originally from Queens located New York, and growing I rarely visited the city. Walking around the city and finding this museum has helped me to get more comfortable wandering around in the city. Also, the museum showed me that learning could actually be really fun. This is helpful because I actually want to get more involved in my classes. Visiting this museum has definitely showed me there is so much to learn and how eye opening it could be. So, if you’re looking for something to do during one of your breaks at Baruch, visit the Museum of Mathematics!

UCLA – Sabrina’s GIM #2

On Thursday, September 7, 2017, I attended a club at Baruch, called UCLA, which stands for United Chinese Language Association. It may seem as though this group is only designated for the people who speech a Chinese language, which may be mostly true, but there were a couple people who didn’t; still, they joined the club on that day because the club welcomes diversity for people who are dedicated to learn more of the Chinese language. There was so many people in club that we filled the room with every chair and had people standing and sitting on the floor, cramming the doorway. Despite the fact that it was so crowded, we still had lots of fun during the club hour because we played group games that helped us get more involved and friendly with each other. The first game we played was called ‘Google Feud’ which was just like ‘Family Feud’ but based on Google searches. The large group was divided into 2 teams and we had to fill in the blank for top google searches. For example, the category of choice was called ‘names’ and the beginning of the blank read ‘Donald…’ so the first answer was obviously ‘trump’ and that result was the number one search on google, so the team’s score increased by 10000 points for guessing the number one search. The second game that we played as a group is called the ‘Zoom In Game’ in which we had to guess what the zoomed in full picture was. For example, in the zoomed in picture, there was a dark green bushy looking kind of picture with a shade of light blue in the top right hand corner. At first, the teams thought that the full picture was supposed to be of a tree, but in the end, the other team guessed that it was a Poland Spring bottle, and they were correct. Then we took a group picture with everyone in the corner and there was so many people that a lot of people weren’t seen in the picture at all. Then, we had free Chinese food at the end.