On November 12 at 12:30 I attended the workshop on mediating and resolving conflict.  This workshop wasn’t to bad.  It got straight to the point and didn’t take up too much time.  Even though, according to the schedule, it was supposed to end at 2:30 we finished at 1:30.  Most of the workshop was spent just joking around about different conflicts such as one between a couple that one person volunteered to share.  If this workshop repeats then I definitely recommend people go to it.  It is an easy way to fulfill one of the workshop categories without wasting too much time like most other workshops.

I went to the art gallery at Baruch.  The featured artist was Mercedes Matter.  To be quite honest from what I was able to see I wasn’t to pleased with her work.  She is considered a modern artist and I am not a fan of modern art.  Some modern art might be ok but personally when I look at a painting I like to know exactly what Im looking at.  I don’t want to have to search for a table leg like I had to when looking at some of the work of Mercedes Matter.

I attended the resume workshop not so long ago with Morris, it was pretty useful, and pretty well presented. One for the better workshops i have been to, the advice is good, and they didn’t yell at us for being late. Also we learned a lot about improving or making career plans and utilizing the Starr center.

The art gallery was a very entertaining tour i especially enjoyed the modern pieces. Definitely the most enjoyable of workshops i have been to so far. However enjoyable the tour was the wait was not, especially with about 40 people crammed into one side of a lobby. But it was well worth it in my opinion.

I attended my final workshop on the October 22. That is correct, it took me a month to finally blog about the Career Planning workshop. I felt that this was probably the most informative workshop that I had attended. The speaker spoke with an emphasis on the importance of applying for internships. She also talked about the proper procedures to significantly help your chances of getting an internship. They handed out a booklet that contained most of what the speaker talked about. I’m pretty they have more copies of these booklets at the STARR Career Development Center. Overall, the workshop was very informative, but it felt like I was in a lecture hall.

Event: Job Fair Preparation
Date and time:  Nov 19,2009 12:30-2:30
Place: VC 1-107

I find this job fair to be helpful. There are two presenters from Verizon talking about networking and interview skills. They mostly emphasized on networking since people might know other employer that might want to hire you. They also discussed on how to sell yourself to other people and leave a good impression, such the 30 second elevator speech.

Event:  Arts at Baruch: Mercedes Matter: A Retrospective
Date and Time: Nov 17, 2009 1:00-2:00
Place: 135 East 22 Street

It took awhile to find the location and upon entering, there is a huge line about 30+ people. The workshop coordinators let a small group about 15-20 people in at once. I was surprised at the small collection of artworks they have. Mercedes, whose artworks were shown, is a modern artist. Modern artists paint abstractly about everything life. There is no need to paint accurately, since there is cameras. Her collection is consist of still life, especially tabletops. Her masterpiece is Tabletop Still Life. It has many triangles that overlaps to create the painting. I was amazed at how she used colors to create objects without using lines to outline them in her pictures.

This workshop was rather short and I spent most of the time waiting to get in than in the gallery. However, the works from Mercedes Matter seemed quite interesting to me, especially as her pieces grew more mature. The most interesting thing was that her works can be sold for about $80,000 each, yet they were still not considered that “famous.” I liked that the whole event was organized in that the setup of the gallery was chronological starting from her works as a child till her last work before she died. The comparison was really evident in the difference and we also talked a bit about the loss of creativity as one grows up into an adult. The way that she expressed herself through art and the way that she saw things was more imaginative and as she grew older, she started to draw more realistic and concrete things. Personally, I thought that her best works were during her later times when she had the more abstract perspective of things. It invoked a curiosity in me and made me stare at it longer and wonder about what she wanted to portray. Overall, this workshop was decent and helped to get my last workshop over with, although I did forget to bring my planner for the signature. Luckily, Paul was on of the peer mentors there and he told me he would sign it later on. Thank god..

Forgot to post this the day of, but i went to my final workshop; Your Life Your Money, it was about college students dealing with things liek student loans and how debt is bad. Basically anything you can learn in any business 101 class. i was glad that it was hte last workshop and didnt really learn any new information and i thought the “pro-union” stuff was aggravating since i am fundamentally against unions. But im sure that sentence will cause an uproar since all educational venues are run by democrats and msot of its teachers/staff are democrats as well. i withdraw that statement. to sum up these workshops were a waste of time but im glad im done with them

Title:Mishkin Gallery tour
Date: Nov. 17, 2009
Time: 1-2 pm
Place: VC 3-190

This workshop was pretty fast. it only took like 15 minutes for the actual workshop. all we did was walk around and listen to the lady talk about the paintings. but waiting to go inside was long, probably waited for 30-40 minutes. well, its because of we had to go inside group by group, not all at once. but only like 16 people can go in at once, and there were alot of people waiting online. maybe i should’ve went on line earlier.