Month: November 2017

This week, I visited my first ever club at Baruch college. The club I visited was the Korean Student Association, also known as KSA. My good friend and I went and we weren’t expecting much to be honest, however, it took quite a good turn of events. I’m not that much of an outgoing person, but if I have to be, I will. In this case, they really pushed me to participate in stuff like games and group talks and it was fun! I met a lot of people and it was more enjoyable than I imagined. Going to this club made me realize that you had to go to these sorts of clubs in order to meet good people and that way you’ll build relationships and connections. My friend, who is also very introvert, had a good time too and I was glad I asked him to go. I will probably be attending this club more often and getting to know upperclassmen and also make new friends.

I went to Baruch Voices a few weeks ago. It was a great experience and I was able to see a lot of freshman from each block perform. It was hosted by our peer mentor, Marwa, who was amazing. I also saw Kenny tell us his story about a patient who was hurt when he was being transported around by Kenny. I thought his story was really funny and well told. It was a lot of fun but I forgot to take a picture.

I was chosen to represent our block in Baruch voices and it was a very enriching experience. I originally didn’t plan of performing, but when my block chose me I was shocked. Going to the event I didn’t know what to expect, all I knew was that Marwa, our Fro mentor, was going to be hosting the event. I definitely was nervous to perform, mostly because I didn’t know what order I was in and I couldn’t anticipate when it was my turn to perform. Performing however, went by very quickly. Once I got on stage I had fun telling my story and the next I know I’m done. I am very grateful to have had this experience. I felt like this event helped me connect with Baruch as a community.

For this blog I have decided to take the Universum Career Test. This test focuses in my career interest and the companies I am interested to work in. I chose five companies, J.P Morgan, Morgan Stanley, Google, Apple, and Tesla, the test gave me several different options for each company and I had to choose the option that appeals to me. For instance, one of the category for the test was flexible hours, and I thought Google has flexible hours because I heard they only work for the company four days and work for themselves one day. After submitting the test, the result states the career type they think it’s good for you, unfortunately they could not come up with a career type for me because supposedly they didn’t acquire enough information about me. However, the result have suggested ten companies I should look in to work for in the future. I don’t know at least five companies which were suggested to me, so researching about them will be nice and I will get a better insight of the companies and maybe understand why they were suggested to me. Anyways, this test was extremely helpful it enhanced my understanding of the career I am interested in which is finance.

This week I went to a Starr Career Development Center workshop that took place in the NVC room 2-190. Even though I got there a little bit late, I still learned a lot in there. I learned about clubs in Baruch and how I should take a look at them and find one that I like since there is a club for everyone. I also learned how to write a resume and cover letters that will help me to successfully get a job. Many of the resume tips were very helpful and new to me.

One of the things I liked about this workshop is that not only the information provided is great, but also how the instructor got everyone in the room involved by asking questions about what clubs you were in/considering to join, and also tried to help us come up with things to put into our resumes that best fit into the job we might want to apply to and how to effectively portray a good image of yourself.

Didn’t get to take a picture at Baruch Voices, but Marwa knows I was there.  I didn’t go to the event expecting much, rather just to support my friend Kenny (guy in the picture)  who got chosen from my block. As my friends and I sat down in the crowded multipurpose room, we all decided that we would stay until Kenny gave his performance and then leave. However, once the first person came and began reciting their poem, my face was lit up with awe after each rhythmic verse. As each individual came to stage, one after the other, I realized how idiotic my initial reaction was. The personal recollections and poetry recited honestly blew my expectations. Kenny also dramatically improved delivering his piece at the event in comparison to in front of our class at FRO. All in all attending Baruch Voices  was an amazing experience. It gave us all a chance to share and listen to the moving and heart-warming stories told by our very own. Unlike my initial surmise, I am now highly excited to come back and maybe even help organize one in my coming years at Baruch.

At first I didn’t know what to do for the career part of the blog post, but when Marwa, our student teacher informed us about a Starr program that we can attend. It helps you connect with the SCDC and make new friends at Baruch College. My friend also informed me that she was going so we end up going together. The program starts at 11:00am and last until 12:15pm. We had class until 11:30am so we end up missing part of the information. When we arrived at the program, they were up to informing us about how a good resume would look like and how you can improve your resume to look just as good as that one. For example, they showed us examples of how a resume should be formatted. She informed us what we should put on our resume if we didn’t have any experience such as working or volunteering. She recommended that we put group projects that we worked on together to help show leadership and teamwork. She also recommended teams and clubs that we joined which could help a lot. We speed up the last few topics about what to write down under categories due to low amount of time. Me and my friend ended up missing part of the program, but we still left with some knowledge of how to create a professional resume.

Last Thursday I just registered to the Vietnamese club, which represents my country. It is called Vietnamese club but most of them are Korean, Japanese and Chinese. There are only 3 Vietnamese memembers which are my best friend, one of the club’s leader and I. However, the club’s members are very friendly and interesting. We joint the game show on the 9th floor and there were nearly 25 people. They were very happy and exciting because they could gathered more vietnamese members. At first, the leaders divided us into 5 different groups and we played the game called “draw and guess”. There was one person represented in each group came to the board and drew some topics that the leaders gave to them. Then the others must guess what the topic was and whoever got the correct ones had the point. After 5-6 rounds, our team had nearly the lowest points. The next game was “act and guess”. Instead of one person going to the board and the rest members guess, this game asked the whole group to come to the board and only one person could guess the topic. Finally, we were the winners after 5 rounds in this game and we had a gift of some chocolate cakes. After these 2 games, we could have the light lunch with either salmon or chicken sandwiches and some drinks such as coke or sprite.

At the end of the game show, we took the group photos and the leaders announced some activities in the future. We also have the instagram and facebook page of this club. Therefore, we usually take some funny and beautiful pictures of our activities and the whole group during and after the club time. It was an happy and unbelievable experience for me that I could make more friends, join one of the best clubs in Baruch.

Continue reading “Vietnamese club”

Two weeks ago, I attended Baruch Voices, where many students presented poems or personal stories. My Fro teacher, Marwa, was actually the MC of the event. It was a great experience for me, being that I was able to hear very creative and interesting poems and stories. My classmate, Kenny, performed at this event, giving a great, and graphic story about his first experience working at a hospital. His story went as follows: Kenny was told to take an older man in a wheelchair from one room in the hospital to another. Kenny began to stroll him down the hall, not knowing that a bump was approaching. He unintentionally went up the bump fairly quickly and the old man sitting in the chair popped out and back into the chair. When he landed back into the chair, his reaction was simply “ooft”. With hundreds of nerves running through his body, Kenny continued to stroll the old man. Minutes later, Kenny was holding onto the bars of the wheelchair, as the rubber suddenly fell off. Instead of disregarding the rubber, Kenny tried extremely hard to pop the rubber back into the bar of the wheelchair, forgetting that he was strolling the old man. Consequentially, Kenny strolled the old man straight into the wall. His first reaction, before making sure that the old man was notin pain, was to make sure nobody saw the incident. Once he checked that no one saw, he asked the old man if he was okay, and once again he replied simply with an “ooft”. This was only one of the many funny, interesting, and talented performances that I was privileged to hear.

Before attending this event, I was grateful that I had not been chosen to present my monologue at this event. However, as I sat and watched these performances, I quickly changed my mind. I was regretful for not putting as much effort into my monologue. What if I was chosen? What if I was able to present my story or poem? Would I have gotten over my fear of public speaking? Did I miss out on a great opportunity? All of these questions ran through my mind.

 

 

To my fellow Baruch members, please be noted that I don’t have any career set for myself, but I do have a few ideas hanging over my head. Now this is only hypothetical but I believe that maybe just maybe, I could make it as an employee in the business of banking. The reason for this is that one time, a few months ago, my mom and I went to Chase bank to help set up an account. The man who helped us said that he use to go to Baruch for college just like me. That what got me thinking that maybe I could get a career as a banker someday. Also note that I do not possess a photo for the event because once again, this is hypothetical, but it never hurts to dream a little, right?