My weeks are pretty eventful nowadays, so I’m not completely sure which to talk about. But given I’m writing this on a Sunday night, why not talk about today. Heads up, I won’t really go in chronological order, just whatever pops In my mind. So I contacts one of my friends that I haven’t talked to for a month. She’s from turkey and finally I have a 5 day break from college so I had the time to talk to her. One of our main talking topics was this show called “Sense 8”. She introduced me to it and I gotta say, I love that show. It’s a gem to the human race. So it was nice catching up. Besides that I was watching some sense 8 today actually, I began it months ago, I’m a slow watcher. Most shows I don’t ever get back to after not watching for more than a week. I haven’t watched this since college started but here I am liking it just as much as I did back then, maybe more. I sent out my English assignment a few minutes ago, I learned from a friend we actually have free Microsoft word, thank goodness I’m not a student who buys thing beforehand. I have my BLS assignment due on October first, I have to get to that tomorrow, giving me 2 days to do it. I’m not a procrastinator I swear. As for calculus, I’m months ahead on my homework for that class, I just like calculus. Besides all of that, that’s basically the gist of my day. I’m on a bed now with my cat and I might watch some more sense 8, I needed a day like this.

Update: maybe I’ve been doing this wrong, I see a lot of reflections on the class itself. If I am doing it wrong, let me know

Class was canceled this day so my friends and I just went to Central Park and I stayed there the whole day. But I had class around 3 in the other building so I had to go back to school 🙁

It was a good feeling opening up my phone to see that class is canceled. The whole day I felt so happy because I had the opportunity to catch up on assignments. I went to my club team practice for the rest of the day because the  Baruch pool was closed. I felt bad for the people who had classes in the other building, but then again I should be thankful that I am have classes hereat Baruch.

This FYS class started by having four students tell us about themselves for the Monologue we will be presenting in the future. This was very helpful, the students received feedback on their presentations and the whole class got a better understanding about the monologue.

After this we formed groups of 4 to 5 people and discussed what culture is. We compared anecdotes of our personal life, such as taking our shoes off when we got home. It was  very interesting, we learned many new things we had in common with our classmates.

Last week an unexpected event took place. Classes were canceled (for the first time) on Tuesday in the NVC building because there was a problem with the elevators, fortunately I had all my classes for the day here. We were informed about this half way thru Philosophy class, which was great but I wish I knew about this before I got to Baruch, for I could have slept a lot more. We all were really happy we could go back home and chill for the rest of day.

This week’s class introduced the  terms discourse communities and cultural diversity. I enjoyed this week’s class because it further developed my understanding of cultural diversity at Baruch. Discourse communities are groups who have common interests or goals including culture. I defined culture as the traditions, beliefs, or customs people accept as part of their identity. It’s important to know about cultural diversity at Baruch because it encourages students to talk to people they usually don’t interact with. Adding onto that, cultural diversity relates to cultural competence, the ability to understand and effectively interact with people, because awareness allows students to be considerate and learn from others. In class, a video showed participants placed into boxes based on their cultural race and asked questions. Participants were shocked that despite looking different, most people from different background shared similar experiences. This can be applied to learning at Baruch because while we may consider everyone to be different because of our appearances, we are likely to share similar goals or interests thus sparking a relationship.

This week’s FYS class covered a lot of material. To start off, we discussed our past week/weekend, the few students that shared out had interesting stories, it was cool to see we’re actually warming up to each other and comfortable enough to discuss things, it makes sharing out those short paragraphs about ourselves sound less nerve racking. Afterwards we discussed culture and what it means to us. Each group had a similar definition and after watching the video it showed us just how similar our lives really are. Class concluded with the fact though we may appear to be different, in reality we go through similar life situations which we seem to undermine causing us to stay a certain distance from others when that shouldn’t be the case.

FYS  

Deana Bing  

Emplid: 23649286    

 

Enrichment #1: Museum of Broken Glass 

 

For the past few weeks I’d been eyeing this one museum on Astor Place, a few blocks away from where I work. On the outside windows are hundreds of names of just the few people that have died in police related incidents. As a person who advocates for the wellbeing of the black community, and the humanization of black men, I couldn’t just walk past it. In fact, I had gone back and forth for days, because the opening date kept being moved around!  

I entered and met John, a coordinator of the museum. He was very informative on the government policies that allow police aggression. We spoke briefly on the Police Secrecy Act, the Solitary Confinement Act and a petition to legalize marijuana, all of which visitors can sign and send to Albany to get involved.  

The museum itself is only a pop-up, but there is a lot to notice even though it’s small and seemingly bare. The exhibits were cubbies, and several of them were of more names of people who’ve been killed by the police. Each tag had a name, place of death, date of death, and a comment on the person killed. One tagged that disheartened me was of an eight-year-old boy who’d been killed by an off-duty cop, his father. 

Another exhibit that I found interesting was one about fare evasion. There were over 5,000 fare evasion arrests in 2018, and 90% of the people arrested were black or Latino. Being from New York, it’s ironic to see police being at stations because there are so many more dangerous crimes that happen every day.  

Ultimately, I find it refreshing to have a museum that caters to police brutality, because it isn’t talked about enough. Black families have found themselves having “the talk,” with their sons about how people will target them, similarly to “the talk” our ancestors had about white extremists. Black females are also being harassed by the police, but it is mostly black males who face this kind of racial discrimination. The first step at correcting the problem is by addressing it, and this museum does just that.  

 

Emplid: 23649286 

 

In class, we talked about many so many things. The bulk of the class was about study-abroad, which is interesting in and of itself. I had no idea that Baruch offered that many countries to study abroad to and it definitely opened my eyes to another opportunity at Baruch. Baruch isn’t a state school, and it doesn’t always seem as big as it is, so learning that it offers that many countries put its greatness into perspective. It was also helpful to me that credits were mentioned. Much of the class of 2023 are business majors or intend to go to Zicklin which means we don’t have as much wiggle room for liberal credits. Mentioning that was important to me because I’m considering the travel abroad program, I need to get a plan in order as soon as I can. We also talked about the honors program which I’m not that interested in, but it was good information to know just in case.  

The monologue exercise at the start of the class warmed us up. Bernice and Gabriela covered a lot more topics than usual today which included discourse communities and intercultural competence. The discussion about the latter that happened in class was very memorable for me, I really liked hearing about my classmates’ opinions. They were very detailed and extensive in their responses and I learned how to better articulate my views about the topic in the future from them.