Author: m.maky

On Wednesday, November 8th, I went to a STARR Career Workshop, which was called Small Talk: It’s a Big Deal. In the picture above, the handsome guy in the red shirt is me.  I learned a lot about making small talk at this workshop. We even practiced small talk on each other. I thought it would be awkward since we were forced to talk to each other, but it was not awkward at all. I met a lot of new people who go to my school. I had actual conversations with them and I enjoyed myself. I learned that small talk is important for making connections and networking. It’s also important for knowing how to speak to future employers in interviews. I also learned the importance of body language in communicating with others. Basically, it is important to keep a good posture in any social environment because it shows that you are approachable and that others should have no problem coming up and talking to you. In any networking event, it is important to make yourself presentable and approachable. Dressing up well is not enough, but body language and presentation will determine the amount of connections that you will receive. This experience was valuable and will help me at Baruch. I am now confident in my small talk skills.

Last month, I attended an event where I was taught to meditate. This event was done as one of the many events for suicide prevention week. As you can see in the picture above, I am lying on a yoga mat after I had just finished meditating. I learned many things at this wonderful event. First of all, I learned that you do not have to be on a yoga mat in order to meditate. You can meditate in any position as long as you are comfortable in that position. In fact, before I went on the yoga mat, I was sitting on a chair to meditate. After I meditated in the chair, I went to the yoga mat to try it out and it felt great. Another thing I learned is that meditation is about bringing yourself to the present moment. There are many misconceptions of meditation, such as a man sitting on the floor with his eyes closed and relaxing his body. It is not only this; there is much more to meditating properly. In order to meditate properly, you have to get comfortable and then breathe. While you breathe, you have to focus on a part of your body through which your breath is traveling. This part of your body can be your nose, your throat, your chest or your stomach. After that, you just continue to focus on that part of your body for as long as you can. The important thing is to think about the present moment and where you are at that moment. Do not think about the past or the future. It sounds easy, but it was difficult for me at first. As I tried to focus on the present moment, I kept thinking about other stuff in my life, such as schoolwork and my social life. Eventually, I got the hang of it and I learned how to meditate properly. It is a very important skill that I have yet to master. I enjoyed the event. It was worth going to, even though I had a lot of homework on that day.

I recently went to the Metropolitan Museum of Art and I have gone through the Japanese art exhibition. It was a very pleasant experience for quite a few reasons. One of which is that it showed artwork, which I would consider masterpieces, that was very aesthetic and pleasing to the eye. The picture shown on the side is me in front of one of these pieces. The piece shown is a portrait of a buddhist priest named Ingen Ryuki, who created and spread a new sect of buddhism all over Japan. Not only did this piece allow me to learn new historical facts, but it also showed me that seeing is learning too. In other words, visual learning is important. This lesson will potentially help me throughout college whenever I encounter a difficult subject that may be an obstacle in my path to graduation. While my first semester at Baruch College has been fun, it has also been quite busy, especially with many reading assignments and quizzes. In one of my assignments, I was asked to define and explain a term from Economics class known as “elasticity”. The first thought that came to my mind was to read the entire chapter that was dedicated to this term. Although this an effective way to learn it, it is inefficient since it is very time-consuming. Then I thought of a better idea, which was to watch a video on elasticity on an online website. This video was a great, visual way of explaining this economic concept to me since it visually showed people in a market performing examples that can be explained through elasticity. Overall, the experience at the museum was a success since I learned something new that I could use to help me with me academics. It would have taken me a long time to learn about Ingen Ryuki’s piece if I had read it from a textbook instead of actually seeing it my self.