Upcoming STARR Workshops

Here are a couple of workshops coming up that might be of interest to you. To reserve a spot and to access the full list of workshops log into your Starr Search account here.

Thursday October 30th On Campus Recruiting Workshop

12:30 – 2:30 pm 2-190 VC (must meet OCR requirements)

Wednesday October 31st Internship Seminar

3:00 – 4:30 pm 2-190 VC

Wednesday November 7th Build Confidence! Improve Your Interpersonal Skills!

1:00 – 2:30 pm 2-190 VC

Thursday November 15th Making the Transition: College to Career

12:30 – 2:30 pm 2-190 VC

Become a Student Leader. Apply to Team Baruch!

Baruch College offers a dynamic leadership program,T.E.A.M. Baruch, that trains students under the model of social change by the Higher Education Research Institute of UCLA.

Training for T.E.A.M. Baruch involves a four day intensive program in mid-January which includes an overnight retreat at an off campus location. Accepted candidates for T.E.A.M. Baruch will be required to pay a $45 training fee which will include training for all four days including meals, materials and the overnight retreat.

Applications are due November 2nd by 5pm to the Student Life Office at NVC 2-210.

Upon completion of T.E.A.M. Baruch training students become eligible to interview and train for various on-campus positions such as:

Peers for Careers (Starr Career Development Center)
Freshman Seminar Peer Mentors

Orientation Leaders
Peer Academic Advisors
PAWS (Peers Advocating Wellness Services)

For more questions visit the office of Student Life.

Solidifying Ambitions

By: Yahya Khan

Class of 2014, Majoring in Accounting

Peer for Career

I came to college with a very vague definition of what I wanted to do and how I was going to go about it. I wanted to major in a “business” subject and get a “good” job when I graduated. I chose this path because it seemed to offer the perception of stability and perhaps, better career prospects.

Though I had no concrete idea about what I wanted to do or which particular career path I wanted to follow. Many of my peers had similar aspirations about being successful and finding the right career path without actually having set goals or a clear direction about what they wanted to do.

We were told by many, including career counselors, friends, and parents that this was normal, that it was fine to not have our lives all planned out. And I accepted this explanation without even thinking about it. Looking back I wish I thought about it more.

It is perfectly fine to not know what you want to do or how exactly to do it, as long as you are actively searching for those answers.

Yet rather than actively looking for these answers and going out of my comfort zone to find them, I made the mistake of taking things lightly and hoping that I would come to some magical realization. I should have reached out to people more experienced than me, contacted professionals from the prospective fields I was considering and basically put in more time and effort to get to know myself and what I wanted to do.

For a long time, I focused just on my studies and participated in campus activities without a clear sense of purpose. Slowly however, the realization dawned on me that time was slipping away.

I realized that in order to attain something, I had to make some very specific goals and implement a strategy to achieve my chosen goals. I became a lot more motivated and started focusing on my career choices and what they offered me and what I offered in return. Once I started the process, the details fell into place and I started to see some of the fruits of my labor.

I interned over the summer at a large public accounting firm. My experiences there, while providing me with a host of answers about career prospects and expectations, gave birth to just as many more questions.

The point that I am trying to make is that I had an unrealistic view of how a career and/or a job would play out. It is very important to put yourself out there and to obtain as much information as possible.

Each experience that I have had has allowed me to judge my own skills set and inclinations better and hopefully, make informed decisions about the next step.

Too many of us delay the process, waiting for senior year or perhaps just for that weekend around the corner; the time is now to search and to learn because the process is long and arduous and the implications, dramatic.

The career choice we make will have an effect for a long time and therefore, it is essential that we do so with as much knowledge and insight as possible to pave the way for a satisfying and successful career.

Young Journalist and Baruch Student Reflects on Challenges of Reporting

By: Kamelia Kilawan

Journalism and Religious Studies, Class of 2014

Peer for Career

I asked two questions to an Oscar-nominated filmmaker that seemed overly technical once said. Another reporter jumped in asking simple questions–an instance that happened once before when a television reporter amped up her microphone next to my recorder. Oh the joy of reporting.

Reporting is like having the ability to understand all angles of an idea you may have. A New York Times feature writer once said that, “there is no such thing as an objective reporter” but that reporting calls for stepping onto the other side and hearing an argument from both camps.This skill may be integral to the profession of journalism, but I think it is as much a personal challenge as it is one where the results end up in public.

As a local community writer and blogger my foundation in journalism would probably be described as “a grassroots citizen-journalist.” But my summer internship at an online publication geared to city politics and policy has given me the legwork to practice reporting in a world that is quite different from my local Queens neighborhood.

Asking questions on the steps of City Hall, at public countings for contested political races, and during public meetings with Board of Election commissioners has been an invigorating experience this past summer.

I find it either a great process where if I’m persistent enough I can gain a lot of insight into the way someone thinks and I’m able to get the quotes I’m looking for. Or, the process of asking questions can be tedious, scary, and a experience where I feel insecure about my abilities as a reporter.

Imagine how nerve-racking it is to go up to someone and ask to have a little time to speak with them–then when you have the chance, you must come up with questions that are not too over-reaching so the person you’re asking doesn’t look at you as if you have two heads.

Plus, the questions cannot be so obvious that you are wasting the person’s time when you could have done your research and answered it yourself.

Sometimes I’m not sure what direction I am going in when I ask a question, but after reading a few chapters from Porter and Ferris’s The Practice of Journalism: A Guide to Reporting and Writing the News, I realized that understanding is the essence of reporting. It is my chance to understand all of the elements of the story, all of the people in it, and all of the facts.

Many consider the Five W’s–Who, What, When, Where, and Why as the basic checklist of a news story. But I think what needs to be emphasized among reporters even more is the How. How does one develop as a journalist? It certainly becomes a craft with practice and everyone has their own style but what reigns most important to me is following your instincts in asking a question. And this makes reporting quite an adventure worth pursuing–at least for me.