On Thursday, April 14th, I attended the Baruch Voices event, along with fellow students from other Freshman Seminar classes. This event celebrated freshman voices and was ironically held in the same room as freshman orientation. It took place during school hours, making it very easy to attend. The event consisted of eight performances, all very different but all very touching and inspiring. The audience wasn’t hefty however everyone showed huge support for the presenters. Every monologue was different, consisting of themes like loss, independence, love, belief, hardships etc. This was by far my favorite event that I’ve attended at Baruch College, one that I will continue to attend in the future. I admire each person who performed, who had the courage to get up on stage and share a piece of their life and their thoughts with everyone who attended. It was really nice to see how creative people can get when expressing their feelings and how much passion they had while presenting.

For my student life event I attended an away baseball game between Baruch and Maritime College. This game took place on Saturday at the MCU Stadium in Coney Island. This was a free event and open to the public, however no one besides the families of the players showed up, possibly due to the cold weather. The crowd was quiet but the players were very energetic, cheering each other on throughout the game. I enjoyed the fact that this game wasn’t a home game, watching a game at an actual stadium made it more interesting and easier to go to. Baruch was doing well in the beginning but Maritime College ended up winning. Even though the team lost, the players had much more team spirit than those of the opposing team. Despite the clod weather and a crummy crowd the team made the most out of the game, leaving me pleased for going to the event.

On Thursday, February 18th, I attended my first event at Baruch College. It was an academic event, “Analyzing Texts Workshop” which took place at the writing center. A group of around ten people took part in this learning event, each of whom came for help with assignments for various classes. There we were given a sample reading which we analyzed closely and discussed as a group. Everyone was very engaged and attentive as we worked on the close reading assignment. We then worked individually identifying literary techniques and patters found in the reading. Lastly, we independently read and applied the same strategies learned from the first reading. This tested our abilities in successfully identifying patterns within a text. The instructor leading the workshop was friendly and very helpful, treating the workshop as a discussion based English class. Everyone attending felt comfortable expressing their thoughts and attentively responding to others. I was amazed at how constructive the workshop was and I’m glad I was able to attend it so early in the semester. I know I will apply the knowledge I gained in future reading and writing assignments.