Month: October 2017

Instead of going to a traditional museum, Joey and I decided to go to a farm museum. On Friday, we went to the Queens County Farm Museum. There were many activities offered, one of them being The Amazing Maize Maze, which is essentially a three acre corn maze. The facilitators began with a “Stalk Talk”, which is where they basically told us the rules of the maze as well as how to find clues to get to the exit; then, we were off to find our own way out. Aside from the corn maze, there was also a petting and feeding area where you could interact and feed the farm animals. Some of the animals the farm museum raises are sheep, rabbits, pigs, roosters, cattle, goats, alpaca, honeybees, etc. The farm museum also offered a tour that taught about their green houses, growing fields, gardens, and composting areas among others.

Last month, I went a health event during the suicide prevention week. Mohtaz went with me and he also took this picture, so props to him for helping me out during this difficult time. Anyhow, I went to the event which was in a small room. There was a grand total of roughly 3 or 4 people so it was very exciting. The meditator explained how meditating has helped her life and we all tried it. She made us close our eyes and she kept telling us to focus on our breath. Honestly, I was pretty anxious even prior to this event and I was hoping that this would help. I repeatedly fell asleep during the session and I woke up whenever she said “focus on your breath”. When she finally told us to open our eyes, I was dazed from my semi-nap but I did feel quite relaxed. The relaxation didn’t last long after I left the room, but perhaps this is something I should try to do more often daily.

 

Last Tuesday, Simon and I visited the Museum of Public Relations which is located on the fifth floor of the William and Anita Newman Library. During this visit, I learned about the advancement of technology and prominent figures that made a substantial amount of change in our modern society.

I saw many inventions such as a typewriter, a camcorder, a telephone with a spinning dial and a camera. It was interesting to see the difference in the technology between then and now. Now we have Iphones that can take pictures, videos, and make phone calls. It is also capable of storing documents through apps like google docs app. To see such a major advancement in our technology shows how far we have come in such a short period of time. In addition, it makes me wonder what we will achieve in the next decade or two.

 

I also learned about Dan Edelman who played an important role in advocating women’s right in smoking publicly. There was even a walk where both male and female supporters walked down the streets smoking as a small form of retaliation against gender inequality. During that time there were many controversies such as woman suffrage and equal pay for women. Thus showing how there was a lot of social reform during that time.

I enjoyed touring the Museum of Public Relations and would recommend it to anyone who has an interest in seeing how far we have come technologically and how Dan Edelman had a major role in forming our modern society.

 

On October 5th, I attended a Starr Career development workshop. It was a panel involving people from the car rental company, Enterprise. Interestingly enough there was an alum there who talked about his experiences at Baruch and how he used the resources at Baruch to help him land internships.  The panel was mostly asking questions to the representatives. I learned that enterprise is a family owned business and their management internship really helps a lot of people advance within the company. The alum said that he got the internship through Baruch at a career fair. It was interesting to see how these people were being promoted in as little as six months. One representatives also talked about how he wanted to go into stocks but hated it and went back to enterprise.

“The Baruch Writing Center is a resource that every student should utilize.” Our professors tell us this when we have our papers due, or at least mine do. I am  aware of the expectations for college; we are to reach excellence. I do not struggle with writing essays, far from it. In high school, I could write a full five paragraph essay in ten minutes. It had the introduction, the quotes, the analyses, and the conclusion.

I knew the mechanics. What I did not know was what made a “good” paper good and a “great” paper great. Even in college, I still try to figure this out. I know one thing, though: My paper, at best, is good. To make it great, I needed to push harder, using all my resources. This is where I decided that the writing center is what I could use to achieve excellence.

The writing center is located on the eighth floor of the Newman Vertical Campus for appointments and the second floor of the library building for the walk-in center. Many, many people are reserving appointments, and you would need to make an appointment at least two weeks before the date to have a seat. I did not have this, so I went to the library. From one to six, there are tutors that will help you with my essay. I used this for my English 2100 essay, a critical analysis of a story.

There were many questions floating around my head when I walked in. Is the introduction acceptable? Was my diction strong? Did my essay even make sense? I found advice that answered these. The staff read through my work and thoroughly and encouraging and pointed things that could be fixed, and how they could be fixed. They do not demean your work, only wanting to make it better.

Now, my paper is much better than what I had before. No, my introduction was weak. Yes, my diction was strong. Yes, my essay was coherent but could always be improved. Twenty-five minutes is short, but it still helps. I recommend any to use the writing center, as the professors say. It could be the difference between a B paper to an A paper.

Last Thursday, I attended the Writing Center in order to help me with my English paper thats due in the upcoming days. At the writing center, I signed up for a Peer Review session. Whats different of a Peer Review session than a regular one-on-one session is that in a Peer Review session you get to work with many other students, as well as, have a mentor to help everyone. What we did at the Peer review session is everyone read their papers and we all, as a group, gave feedback to each person individually based on their own writing piece. What I liked about the Peer Review session is that I was able to get feedbacks from multiple people, as opposed to just one person. This allowed me to fix all types of mistakes in my paper, as well as, being sure there is not any mistakes to be worried about. Sometimes as a writer, when I revision my work I get scared Im forgetting something, and even if I ask someone for their help, I still feel a bit concerned that we both missed a mistake. With have multiple people check over my work, I was confident in my writing and hopeful that it can get a great grade. I also liked how now I developed new strategies of writing, by listening to the feedback given by others. The more feedback I get, the more strategies I learned for the future. The Writing Center is definitely a place I will keep coming back to in my time at Baruch.

For this blog post, I decided to go to a Starr career event and attended the Target Interview prep workshop on Tuesday, October 3rd. In this workshop, I learned many helpful tips and preparations to help get ready for an interview and make the best impression to employers. I learned simple tips on how to make a good first impression: I learned to always make eye contact as you are talking with the employer, learned to not look nervous, but to appear confident, learned to make yourself sound interesting by adding excitement to your tone of voice, and more. I also learned that after an interview, it is great to keep in touch with the employer by thanking them for their time via email and to follow up with the employer to show that you are interested in the job. I also learned that it is important to do research on the company you want to work for before an interview so you have prior knowledge about the company and its purpose. I used to think that interviews were only to find out why you want to work or why you want a certain position, but I walked away from this workshop learning that interviews have only a little to do with why you want a job, but are meant to learn more about who you are and try to get the employer to connect with you on a personal level.

This week I went to the writing center. There are a couple of essay currently I have to work on. I went to the writing center to work on my english essay. I walked in and a women named Anna helped me. I went with a pretty weak thesis statement and she assisted me to develop a stronger thesis statement. Beginning to write an essay for me is tricky, because I feel I need to cover so much. At the writing center, Anna helped my brainstorm ideas and paved an order of what to write. So now I have the essay all planned out.

I found the writing center very helpful. It can be a useful tool for whatever writing skill or assignment. The writing center is available to all students and its free! Personally, I was able to learn some writing skills there and feel like I have improved. Writing center is definitely an option for future tasks or just for feedback.

 

 

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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.