Author Archives: Mahir Khan

            Unlike many people, making quick and smart decisions was always easy to me. Yes, before making a decision, I stop and think about the consequence of the choice I’m going to make but once I made that choice, I always stick to it. However, choosing a college and a major is a quite difficult task and even more so for a starting freshman.

I never thought I would come to Baruch. Studying Business was never my aim. I wanted to study medicine but unavoidable situations brought me to Baruch and now that I’m here, I like it. But liking the college is one thing and finding a major that I actually like is quite a different matter. But after spending a few months in here, I now know that I have to study business. Not because of any pressure or anything but some arcane instinct within me is telling me to get a business degree. For once in my life I’m going to study something that I want.

The assessments in the Focus 2 program told me that I have a high level of self consciousness; I know what I want to do with my life. I want to Major in Business Management and I’m confidant I’ll be good with it.

            Unlike many people, making quick and smart decisions was always easy to me. Yes, before making a decision, I stop and think about the consequence of the choice I’m going to make but once I made that choice, I always stick to it. However, choosing a college and a major is a quite difficult task and even more so for a starting freshman.

I never thought I would come to Baruch. Studying Business was never my aim. I wanted to study medicine but unavoidable situations brought me to Baruch and now that I’m here, I like it. But liking the college is one thing and finding a major that I actually like is quite a different matter. But after spending a few months in here, I now know that I have to study business. Not because of any pressure or anything but some arcane instinct within me is telling me to get a business degree. For once in my life I’m going to study something that I want.

The assessments in the Focus 2 program told me that I have a high level of self consciousness; I know what I want to do with my life. I want to Major in Business Management and I’m confidant I’ll be good with it.

College is one of the most stressful times of a person’s life. For a real career orientated person, getting good grades, attending classes and keeping personal life together might prove difficult. The pressure of advanced education sometimes cause health deterioration. To function effectively in college, it’s absolutely necessary for inner peace and a healthy, stress free body.

Our enrichment workshop on health and wellness pointed out some facts about stress and how we can avoid them. It also pointed out some assistance Baruch provides about relieving stress which most of us didn’t know. A key point about defeating stress is to have inner peace. Meditation is a good way to have inner piece, but as Master Shifu from Kung Fu Panda says, some people achieve inner piece easily while for others, getting inner peace itself is a cause of stress.

Another easy way to relieve stress and achieve inner peace is yoga. People often think yoga as a complex form of exercise and refrain from it. In reality, yoga is a simple form of stretching and controlled breathing which can be done by almost anyone. A simple stretching of fingers or elbow and breathing slowly for a short time can effectively reduce stress within minutes. Getting a message is a good stress reliever as well as it relaxes the tensed muscles of the body. But for me, the best way to relieve stress is to have self-confidence and belief that no matter what obstacle life throws, one can overcome it.

As for me, I don’t let anything stress me out too much and I don’t leave work for the last moment. I already have inner peace and don’t need meditation for that. Although I stretch and exercise almost every morning, for me the best stress reliever is taking a hot shower or walking at night for an hour. I also drink a lot of water which helps me keep calm.

            I have an abominably bad eye for art and I never found the inner meaning that modern artists talk so much about. To me, modern art looks like a random show of color as if some 3 year old sprayed paint over a canvass. Probably for these reasons, The Sydney Mishkin Gallery is the first art gallery I ever visited in my life and if it wasn’t mandatory, I probably would never have gone there.

The only art I ever came in contact with is the drawings of the comics me and my friend created. The pictures in a comic are much more precise and the direct meaning is much more prominent than the inner meaning. When I visited the Mishkin gallery, the exhibition was on copies of Medieval Chinese paintings and  they made little sense to me. If I was there alone, most pictures wouldn’t make any sense to me but being part of the group and figuring out the hidden messages in each painting became a popular sport among the group.

A friend figured out that watching a painting up close and then watching it from far back creates a different image of the painting. More revelation can be found out when one observes the painting from distance. There was a painting of a Beduin riding his horse is the desert. Honestly. the picture baffled us all as we couldn’t figure out the difference between his torso, his horse and his limbs. However, after scrutinizing it over 10 minutes and having a heated debate  we came to the conclusion that the man is actually wearing a cloak which is flapping in the wind making him look like an illusion. I think the artist drew the picture in such a way to confuse viewers and later on muse over the answer they came up with.

Overall, the visit was fun. I’m not interested in art any more than I was before but the one hour I spent there with my friends was a good one, finding hidden clues in paintings and debating whose point is the more accurate (As Leanna said “I like this game”). After all, it’s still better than sitting in the library and staring blankly at the notes.

Helicopter Parents!

To people who doesn’t really know me, I might come off as a reserved and arrogant type of person but I’m actually the silliest guy you’ll probably meet. I’m Mahir Khan and the first thing anyone should know about me is that I love reading comics, manga and books. At one point of my life I dreamed of becoming a writer and the dream is still there. Hopefully one day I’d be the author of a New York Times bestseller but till then I distract myself with other fancies.

I worked as a contributor in one of the most prestigious Newspapers of my country and it is one of the greatest achievements of my life. The first image of this post is the picture of the cover I wrote on overprotective parents but I did not limit myself to writing only in there. Along with my best friend who is a brilliant artist, as you can see in image 4 and 5, I wrote a number of comics and even though he is back in Bangladesh and I’m in New York, we are still working on a new project for a web comics competition.

As you can see from image 3, I’m not only an avid soccer fan by I play a lot as well. My favorite teams are Chelsea FC and Real Madrid FC and I support Germany in National soccer. My favorite players are Miroslav Klose and Oliver Kahn. I’m also secretly saving money to go to Brazil for the 2014 world cup and watch all the matches Germany plays in.

I also like learning new things like how to drive a ship. Although not very good at it, I know a few basic things like how to avoid the tides and how to follow a ship gps but if I’m actually given a ship to drive we’ll probably drown.

Lastly, I love video games, especially RPGs. My favorite games are Red Dead Redemption and the God Of War series. I also love playing Pokemon and I finished Pokemon Yellow 8 times.

As for my future intentions, I’m still not sure what I want to be but right now I just want to enjoy college life and hopefully the solution to my career indecision will come up someday.