I attended a STARR career development center workshop to build networking skills on Friday last week. I found it to be extremely helpful when it comes to how to present myself in the professional world. It was very interesting how one of the first practices she mentioned was to always keep your right hand free in a professional business event/setting regardless of the fact that you may have food or a drink in your hand or your dominant hand may be your right one. At first it didn’t occur to me why she was telling us to do this, but as she went on explaining why we should get into the habit of doing this, I realized that it would be very un-professional to bump elbows with a person that you are trying to make a business connection with… and handshake is much more professional. She went on teaching us methods on how to enter and exit currently occurring conversations in the room smoothly without being rude or disruptive. She then went on explaining what we should do with the connections that we have established towards the end of a networking situation. A good idea was printing out personal student business cards to give to people as a quicker and more formal way of exchanging information opposed to putting one another’s phone numbers and information into each others phones. She also told us to verbally say thank you to whomever we met during the meeting and follow up later on in the near future with a hand written “thank you” card to further illustrate your appreciation of the new connection. My dad has always said to me… “It’s not about what you know, It’s about WHO you know” and I always thought that was just something that parents say, but after going to this event I realized that he was right!!

Last week I went to the Sideny Mishken Gallery on 23rd Street. Being an artist, I was very excited to see that I could go to an art gallery and write about it for one of our blogpost assignments! I was very anxious to go check out the gallery and walked in just minutes after they opened the doors for the day. It was really cool to observe other artists techniques and the way the use their specific medium to convey a particular message to the viewer. I found the works of Ellen K. Levy to be most appealing to me. Her combined used of what seemed to be lithograph prints and acrylic paints was extremely interesting to look at as it almost popped off of the canvas on the wall. I think it was interesting how she incorporated very average images like cars moving over a bridge and mixed them in with super colorful abstract patterns and designs to make these almost “dreamscapes” feel real and semi-relatable. Levy’s work consisted of these very unatural bright colors because that was  her way of portraying symptoms of hallucination due to dehydration, which I found to be very clever. Patricia Olynyk was the other artist featured in the gallery at this time, her work consisted of photos of human body parts and prosthetic limbs. Olynyk’s message was more about human culture and how heavily society is based off of certain professional opinions and institutions. The piece “The Mutable Archive”  caught my eye as I first walked into the gallery because it is a group of photos of human skulls with tattooed phrases or words giving a very brief and vague explanation of that persons life. Something I have always found to be difficult about going into the city is finding things to do that are cost-free, and the fact that there are galleries like The Sideny Mishken Gallery all around the city it’ cool to know that people can go to these galleries and discover new artists and off-beat expression of modern-day issues.

 Candy Carnival!!!!

I attended the Candy Carnival a couple of weeks ago at Baruch. It was a great opportunity to immediately get a feel for the school spirit and community that Baruch has to offer. It was pretty “sweet” because I got free candy and fruit smoothies, and having the sweet tooth that I do….. I took full advantage of the free candy stuffing a bag full of starburst, pixy sticks and jolly ranchers. I have lived in a couple other places before I arrived at Baruch for my first semester of college, and while living in these locations I have had an easy time meeting new people and making friends. Upon my return to New York I noticed an unsettling monotonous trend which consisted of work and no school whatsoever, I longed for a higher purpose and a more elevated existence. My next move was to apply to school despite my apprehension and fear of the academic world and how to meet people in this new social setting. I applied to most of the CUNY schools, Baruch being one of them. During the time I was waiting to hear back from schools I thought to myself “What if you got into Baruch?”… “That would be pretty cool!” given that I was expecting only to get accepted to community colleges which is not what I wanted. Then I got the acceptance e-mail, I couldn’t believe it! I was actually going to college! Fast forward now to the first day of the spring 2016 semester, I was so overwhelmed with the whole college environment that I didn’t even know what to do with myself that first day, it was so surreal. I was so relived to feel the focused energy inside the Newman Vertical Campus, everyone here seems so professional and that is the exact kind of surrounding I need in order to stay motivated.