For the first post I attended a club event, the club that I had gone to was the E sports club. There they were hosting a LAN event in which we played video games to see basically who was the best. It was pretty fun to play especially since I was able to find people who had a common interest as me. I was able to talk about all the different video games we each had played and how we each had a different approach to playing them. While I was there I was able to see what the club was like and considered joining it. I decided that once I had time I would join it, especially since the hours of going are lenient. However at the time I found out I was to busy to join. Since it was also at the computer lab I finally got around to resetting my password.

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.

I was very very disappointed with both basketball games. I was expecting at least one of our teams to win. The girls have an excuse because half of their team was injured. I found that out later after I told a young lady who i didn’t know  was on the team that baruch team was trash. She got offended but she will be okay. The mens team has no excuse at all. They just didn’t have it in them. Brooklyn played harder. There was a man who was from Brooklyn who almost got beat up by some old men from baruch for talking trash at the game. I never knew that basketball was so serious that it was worth fight over. It got so bad that a security guard had to move people. The guy from Brooklyn was scared and he told the security guard. He could have avoided the whole situation if he sat on the Brooklyn side. I surprise that alot more people didnt come to the game but I enjoyed myself.

For my student life event I ended up attending the women’s battle of Lex on Feb 16th. Now although I have attended school sporting events before, I had never been to any Baruch games so I didn’t really know what to expect going in. The gym wasn’t as packed as I thought it would be which was a pleasant surprise. This did not mean the crowd was any quieter than I expected tho, far from it. In fact there was a whole section filled with Bearcat cheering squads. Guys dressed in nothing but jean overalls and blue helmets stomping, cheering, chanting and just generally reveling in their school spirit. The pre game announcements and player introductions were greeted with massive cheers and even some catcalls. Although most of the energy was centered on one side of the room, it still was more than enough to make you feel like you were at a genuine college sporting event. Unfortunately, the game never really managed to live up to that hype. The first two quarters were fairly light on score with plenty of missed shots, both teams scoring about 20 points between them. Brooklyn college maintained a fairly solid lead throughout the game pretty much, leading the first two quarters by around six points. Once the third quarter began though it started to seem like the bearcats were running out of steam pretty hard. Seeing their opportunity, the Brooklyn college team managed to extend their lead to about 20 points, a gap which the bearcats never managed to close with the game ending at 65-47 for the bulldogs. Overall, although the game might have been underwhelming it was still decently enjoyable to watch, coupled with the energy and fun of the crowd I would say I had a fairly good time.

For my first student life workshop my friend suggested that I attend a rush event for a professional fraternity DSP (Delta Sigma Pi). For the student life workshop, I wanted to attend a club/organization event and possibly join one because I quickly realized in the first week of the semester that if I didn’t put myself out there, I wouldn’t be able to meet new people. I’m a finance major and I’m looking towards investment banking, so my friend Josh suggested I try to rush for DSP to increase my network and to surround myself with intelligent people. Before going to the rush events, I honestly had no idea what I would be looking forward to and thus every event was a completely new experience. Since every event was a new experience, I was pleasantly surprised to be met with outgoing and intelligent people as well as to be able to eat free food.

I attended many rush events, so the event that I would like to highlight is the Alumni Panel that DSP hosted on February 11 from 7-9 PM. Much like the other rush events, there was free food! Normally the events serve free food in the form of pizza or Subway sandwiches, but for the alumni panel event DSP went all out and bought pasta. It was very interesting to hear alumni of Baruch with successful careers at Barclays, BlackRock, and Razorfish to name a few speak on their own experiences at DSP. By the end of the event, I learned a lot about business in general and received a lot of insight into Baruch. I would recommend others to attend rush events next semester because they are very insightful. And if you don’t enjoy it, at least you get free food! –Ian Chi

On Thursday, I attended a workshop at the Writing Center. The workshop was held from 12:30pm-2:00pm. Considering I have absolutely nothing better to do during club hours (except watch as many episodes of Parks and Recreation I can before class begins), I figured I might as well use that time to do something productive that will help me out in the long run. The amount of people in attendance were significantly lower than I had expected. There were at most 10 people that had attended the workshop. The workshop was focused on Analyzing Texts, expanding from the basic strategies of close reading to identifying patterns in the text and using what we’ve found to develop essay concepts. It’s been a while since I’ve written a simple essay, much less derive essay concepts from analyzing a short text. This class was a great refresher on writing techniques I have previously learned. It was helpful and I’d probably attend another workshop in the future.