Friday, October 7, 2011 I attended the Black Male Initiative Conference at Hunter College. It is a date that I will never forget. I learned so much from just attending there and hearing people just talk about the achievement gap between black, Latinos and white. It all started out connecting more with my UMLA Brothers and it was interesting because this one particular brother of mine was talking to me about how much he loves fighting games such as Marvel vs. Capcom 3. My brother Christian is really quiet around all of us and never felt like we were his Brothers. It was a really nice experience talking to him bringing him in more and more into our brotherhood. I learned so much about him that day and it would be an honor to one day face him in Marvel vs. Capcom 3.
Besides the bonds that were created in the BMI conference, I also learned a lot from prominent figures that attended the BMI conference Such as Dr. Julianne Malveaux and Dr. 
. It was such a great day because it opened my eyes to how bad the achievement rates of Black and Latinos have become. After the key note speakers people were given the option of attending a particular workshop they felt interested in. I particularly went to the workshop about pursuing an MBA. In this workshop I met people such as Tarynn Hunter who’s great, great uncle was the founder of Hunter College. Tarynn had discussed with us how she ended up having an MBA. Tarynn and the other panel speakers had shown us that people no matter your ethnicity or background could end up in schools like Harvard and Yale for their MBA programs. I took all their words to heart because it told me, that even though I didn’t end up in an Ivy League school, I can pursue my MBA programs anywhere as long as I was willing to work hard for it. When I wanted to major in Architecture, I wanted to go to MIT for Grad School and I kept thinking how impossible that would be because of how I ended up in CUNY.
After the workshop I went up to Tarryn specifically and she told me “you’re doing fine!! Keep working hard and you will end up in a good place.” After she had told me that, she gave me her phone number which was an honored because I expected no more than an email. After I had left I felt proud of going to the BMI conference because I knew from there on that if I am true to myself, I would soon make it somewhere big.
