I attended the Coloring Up Your Future workshop in room 2-125 in the VIC with a guest speaker, Alfonso Quiroz. The theme of the workshop revolved around issues surrounding the gay/lesbian/queer community. Alfonso Quiroz talked about the obstacles and criticism he faced as he took on political roles. He was often rejected by the Mexican and white community due to his complicated background. But I strongly agree with one thing he said: Since this is New York, there are going to be people everywhere telling you that you won’t make it big but you need to tell them they’re wrong and you are going to be better than them. With that mentality set in his mind, Alfonso Quiroz is now a spokesperson of Con Ed. and he enjoys being a public figure while also working in the corporate field.

I did something similar to this back in high school where we sent packages filled with goodies along with a letter from each student to the soldiers fighting in Iraq. My partner and I decided to send two packs of playing cards since we figured they will have something to do when they’re not in combat. But after hearing a former Marine talk about the necessities that were actually of use to the soldiers, I decided to send him t-shirts instead. After class I went to Chinatown along with two LC buddies and bought a few “I ♥ NY” tees. I hope the t-shirts do fit him because they were pretty huge even for a size L.

I’ve been in college for a little less than a full semester and already I know that the most frequent line I’m destined to hear in my upcoming years in college is “It will look good on your resume.” Ahh. Yes. Of course. The all important resume.You are undoubtedly a slave to your resume. No matter how good looking you are you will still be secondary in importance compared to how impressive your resume is. As sad as how significant a piece of paper with a list of accomplishments is, we must still nonetheless abide by the omnipresent rules of the working world as we are now officially its’ tools. Just kidding, of course. But then again even if I’m kidding it doesn’t mean that its not true. The workshop on Teusday, led by a young woman from STARR, was intended to instill into our minds early on the importance of remaining competitive in the workforce by enhancing our resumes to our fullest capacities. And if we failed to do so…well then good luck with that. The woman attempted to outline the basic structure of a typical resume minus a projector to aide her, which was all at once a commendable feat but also detrimental to the overall success of her presentation. The material she covered detailing the bare essentials needing to be included in a resume was both generic and rudimentary. Most students, even the most inexperienced ones, would be able to pick up that type of information given its’ enormous accessibility. The lack of communication between speaker and audience only further undermined the importance and usefulness of the facts and advice being handed out that day. However, I still applaud the speaker’s efforts for attempting to reach across a seemingly indifferent audience without any form of assistance, even though she seemed to come across as overly aggressive at times in her manner of speaking. But I guess being overly persistant gets your message across at certain times. Attending these types of workshops has the potential of filling one with a sense of both anxiety and drive. While it forces you to contemplate your future prospects–When will I get that next internship? or What if I can’t manage that perfect 4.0 GPA–it also puts you into a competitive mindset propelling you towards reaching both your academic and professional goals. Eventually, that resume will be a summation of these achievements. Ultimately, of course these lists of accomplishments are not the be all or end all of who you are. They are not an evaluation of your self-worth. Even after attaining an internal audit internship at KPMG or a leadership position in the student government you are inevitably the same person. Your external accomplishments in no way signify personal progress and whatever emotional growth that you might have undergone beneath the surface can not be objectively displayed on a resume. This is a simply way of exemplifying the ever important realization that the working world does not care about who you are but what you can do for them. It’s a nauseating reality.

Sorry for making such a late blog about the Club Fair, I didn’t realize I had forgotten to blog about it until now. Since the club fair has been over for a while now, I’ll give suggestions on things that needed to be addressed instead. When I first go there, I wanted to walk back right outside and leave because the lines were outrageously long. For a college this size and the event open to everyone, it was mindless just to have two lines at the door. The atmosphere inside the gym was lively and exciting, and the representatives from the different clubs were generous in answering our questions. However, since not every club posted the exact room and time of where the club would meet on student life, it would’ve been helpful it all clubs included that information on the tables or on fliers. The club fair ended with a break dancing show which had some technical difficulties at first but it turned out enjoyable.

Being a freshman, whether junior high, high school, or college, is never easy. There’s always the new classes, new school buildings, and of course new people to get used to. However, this turned out to be not all that difficult with the help of a little something known as the “learning community.” Particularly, LC-07 in this case, and I have to say, it has got to be one of the best ones there is. Freshman year was spent stressing over classes, making new friends, and of course, spending time for the FRO experience. The only thing I probably didn’t like about FRO were the workshop requirements, but than again, it did give me something to do during my club hours. The Alzheimer’s Memory Walk was probably the most fun so far, but I can’t wait until the show on December 3rd. I can’t complain about the classes, since they’re probably going to be the easiest I’ll take in my college years, even if they were tedious. Of course, there’s also the people, and the one thing I can say is that my freshman year would probably have been totally different if it weren’t for everyone in the LC. Hey, it was a nice experience, and helped me as a freshman getting used to Baruch, but it doesn’t have to end here. Who knows, we might end up seeing each other in our classes next semester.

The Stress and Anxiety workshop was held in room 4-220 in the VC. We were first greeted by a psychologist and were told to grab one raisin from the bag being passed around. At first I thought eating the raisins would help us relieve stress but he told us to hold onto our raisins. It turns out we were to “explore” the raisin as something we’ve never seen before and the exercise would supposedly help us relieve tension but truthfully it didn’t help me much. Then he told us to eat the raisin that we have been playing around with and describe the taste of it. At this point, the majority of the people in the room were reluctant to put it in their mouths. Nevertheless that exercise did work for some people. The next section was a 5-10 minute long auditory exercise which gave instructions to release the tension in our muscles. While listening to the CD, I almost fell asleep on my desk. That part did help me the most in relaxation. The workshop was better than what I expected.

On Wednesday I met with the professor’s assistant from my writing class. When we met, she and I reviewed the research paper I had just gotten back the day before. She helped me think of ways I could rephrase some of my sentences and also helped me fix the grammatical errors in the paper. She actually was able to diagnose a problem with my general structure that I have never noticed before. Apparently for the last 15 years I haven’t been applying the rules of parallelism to my writing, and although I’ve never been penalized for it, it really showed me how little things I never think about it in my writing can make a huge difference when corrected.

On Wednesday I participated in making a care package for the souldier our LC adopted. At first, I was going to bring the typical snack food and hygiene products, but then I had another thought. Why not send something to entertain the soldier? I ended up sending along a sports magazine, a men’s interest magazine, and the latest issue of National Geographic. When I saw that everybody else brought him the typical “care package” items, I felt really good about sending him the magazines.

on Thursday, I attended a workshop about suicides in high school.  We sat in a small room and it was only about thirty students.  We were shown a very informative video about suicide.  It gave statistics and also how serious depression can really be.  There were many different people in the video who’s friends committed suicide and they were talking about what signs people should look out for and how to deal with them.  After the thirty minute video, we had a class discussion for another thirty minutes with the school councilors.  I found this work shop to be very informative and interesting.

On Thursday the 19th, I attended my last workshop dealing with the issue of the high suicide rates of college students.  The stress and adjustment of college life can have a horrible effect on some people, especially those prone to depression.  I also learned about how depression is strongly linked to genetics, meaning it runs in families and is passed down.  We watched a very informative video containing actual people talking about friends or family that had committed suicide and how it affected them.  There was also a few people who attempted suicide and lived.  They told how they felt and how their depression would just get worse and worse over time.  Overall it was a powerful workshop.  Very eye opening and well coordinated.  It made me aware that depression is common in college students and what to look out for in others.  We were given a list of hotlines and websites on the issue if we or people we know may be thinking of suicide.