Today I attended a workshop by STARR career development center concerning internships.  Actually, I was the only freshman attending it. I learned many aspects about internships I did not know before. There were discussed two types of internships: unpaid and paid ones. In fact, companies nowadays hire students who went through paid internships 3 times more frequently than ones who went unpaid. To add to that, today job vacancies are becoming more and more competitive. We were told that it is possible to arrange a job interview on campus. In most cases companies who interview students on campus have more than 300 applicants; they choose 12 to interview and one to hire. Numbers are a little bit scary. Additionally, companies have begun to look for freshmen to hire.

I also learned about websites where I can search for jobs and internships besides STARR webpage. Besides local job and internship suggestions, we were told about options to get experience abroad.

Unfortunately, it is more difficult for international students as me to get a job or internship in US than for other students. However,  it is possible to succeed with OPT or CPT trainings.

All in all, I learned a lot of new information on workship and it encouraged me to attend more seminars about career building.

On Monday, Skai and myself attended the Sidney Mishkin Gallery located near the Baruch Campus. Not only was I unaware of this gallery, but also unaware of the fact that it was 10 minutes away and more importantly FREE. On entering, the building seemed rather official and I felt as though I was entering a court room which made me even more excited to see the artwork. After checking our Baruch ID’s we were granted access and I was partially surprised at the size of the gallery. My classmates had mentioned that the gallery was small; but I would consider it tiny. However just because it’s tiny, doesn’t mean it’s bad. The artwork was captivating and thought-provoking. My favorite piece, as you can see in the picture, included the skeleton pieces: as it was clear, intriguing and odd. I also liked the colors and visual techniques used in the other paintings because it provided a good variety. There was one picture, that caught my attention, of what seemed like a prosthetic leg with a red to black ombre background. I especially liked the ombre background as I felt it emphasized the “prosthetic leg”, making it the main focus of the artwork. The colors used also created dimensions and brought my attention back to it a couple of times. The gallery, also included 2 other pieces that I particularly liked because of its colors. They included a variety of neon colors all of which created a euphoric feel. As I described to Skai, “It felt as though I was on LSD.”

What I thought was going to be a simple and straightforward workshop on Thursday became complicated rather quickly. I had received a flyer about this workshop a week earlier and did not do my due diligence to learn more about it, but instead looked up what floor it would be on and just figured I would walk in. For that I want to apologize to my freshman classmates (Hector, Johnna and the others who attended with me).  As it turns out, the workshop was hosted by and only for Sigma members and we were not supposed to have been there. That much was evident when the Sigma members who hosted the event were clearly not interested in us freshman joining their workshop. It was a decision that was ultimately made by both the hosts and Ricki Weitzen, who conducted the workshop. She said that it was alright from her point of view and there was no reason to make us leave. As for the workshop itself, it was probably the most useful of the three activities I had to do for freshman seminar. It actually provided useful information and something that will help me down the road (as opposed to a basketball game or art gallery). I would like to thank Ricki Weitzen for being very kind to us freshman and for giving an excellent presentation as well as my fellow freshman for being interactive during the workshop to show the Sigma members that perhaps it wasn’t so bad having us there with them.

For my third blog post, under the Career category, I attended a resume writing workshop. It started quite badly actually; there was a serious misunderstanding or miscommunication regarding the workshop. One of my fellow freshmen had been randomly handed a flier for the workshop and being a nice guy, shared the info with several of us. However when we arrived at the workshop we were told that it was being put on by and only for Sigma members. Since AJ had been handed the flier with no questions and since the wording was fairly ambiguous we all thought that the workshop was hosted by Sigma, but open to all. The guy who appeared to be leading the group was initially rather rude in his dismissal of us, saying however that we could ask the woman conducting the workshop whether or not we could stay.  (I’m quite certain he hoped she would send us away.) Eventually his attitude to us warmed and Ricki Weitzen, who put on the presentation was quite kind and allowed us to stay. I can’t help but think they must have both been very happy with this decision; as our little group of freshman were easily the most engaged and participatory, throughout the whole presentation. Ricki did an excellent job explaining all the proper components of a resume and giving us many tips on how to edit and finesse our material. She used several Power Point slides, but it was still fairly painless. My one complaint, is that, stylistically it was very clearly “business” tailored. Which is a little unfair, I admit, since this is primarily a business school. However I do wish she had spent more than a few cursory moments talking about some of the other options that come into play in different employment fields.