Urban semester is a great program organized in Cornell. It is designed for students with various majors: pre med, business, law, etc. ;but given I am a pre med I will mostly focus on that. I met with the responsible of the program last week, Sam Beck. He is a very funny and chill person. He informed us about the program.

Basically, students will live in a university owned building, and they will spend all their time in the medical school. They will follow physicians and attend interesting procedures such as surgery. In addition, they have some classes which look more like discussion classes. The program count as a 15 courses credits.

I really like this program because it has a different teaching method. It allows students to truly learn about medschool and the life of medical students. Indeed students will be assimilated to others students and will interact with a lot of professional. They will have the chance to find mentors, but most of all they will live in the exciting city of NYC.

So if you have not yet find a plan for your future in Cornell, check this program out. I will definitely do so.

Last week we were fortunate enough to have Sam Beck as a guest at our weekly Rose Cafe events. He is the director of the NY Urban Summer program and used his time at Rose Cafe to give each of us individualized advice. I thoroughly enjoyed Sam Beck’s style of hosting Rose Cafe. He spoke to us individually and asked us questions about our future goals and aspirations.

Unlike many other speakers, he did no stand in front of a powerpoint and lecture us. I feel that his lecture truly encapsulated what the original essence of Rose Cafe was meant to be. The atmosphere was relaxed and casual and each student felt deeply involved.

The information Sam Beck conveyed encouraged me to think about my post professional career and about the Urban Semester.

This week we were fortunate enough to welcome Sam Beck to speak at this week’s rose cafe. Although I feel like I say this every week, I really felt that Sam was one of the best speakers that we have had. He established the casual atmosphere right from the beginning of the cafe, and encouraged us to relax and participate in a free back-and-forth kind of discussion with him.

Further, I enjoyed how he personally asked each student about what they want to do in the future, and what they hope to accomplish. I also felt that he was listening very intently about my current studies, and really cared to listen and offer advice. For a stranger to offer so much sympathy and an open ear was really refreshing, and made me leave the rose cafe feeling much more positive than I had come in initially after doing so much homework.

One of the most important topics that he talked about to me was when he was emphasizing the importance of getting a mentor in order to aid one to accomplish their specific goal. I thoroughly agree with this idea. There is so much wisdom that others more experienced have to offer. Also, in my experience, others are also much more willing to impart this wisdom than one would think. People generally seem very excited to share what they have learned through experience in order to aid a peer. I find this to be especially true at Cornell, as there are so many ways to get fellow student mentors, such as joining a service fraternity. Personally, I have joined WICC and have signed up for a mentorship program through that in the past, which has helped me get an internship this year and last year.

I hope in the future that we get other speakers as inspiring and positive as Beck. I really, really enjoyed this week’s cafe.

Professor Beck, a social and cultural Anthropologist, led a Rose Café session that was decidedly atypical, but not bad by any means. It was different in how open-ended it was and it wasn’t necessarily the audience listening to the presenter. Prof. Beck, with the focus on the Urban Semester Program, asked questions to each audience member about what they want to do and tried to give some advice on possible career paths. At the beginning, it was a bit awkward as people didn’t know how to answer but he was very impressive in introducing levity into the room and defusing the apprehension. The major takeaway was how he connected what we were studying at Cornell to what we could do in the future. Often the major is not a determinant of your future career but he did tried to suggest possiblities that each person might like. The Urban Semester Program is an initiative that allows students to take on an internship in any field they feel interested in and also managing the Cornell course load. I think it is easy to get lost in the daily academic requirements at the university but it is important to start exploring and understanding the possiblities for future career paths and trying to obtain internships. Studying and taking exams doesn’t translate to work experience so getting the practical aspect of potential careers is important in my opinion to decide if it is a fit for me. This is the reason why I sought out opportunities to work at clinics and hospitals to understand the atmosphere, the responsibilities involved and interplay between people of various medicine-related professions.

I think this was quite an enlightening talk with Prof. Beck and has inspired to look more closely into the Urban Semester Program and see if I can take advantage of it accordingly. He mentioned that they could connect me to major hospitals and clinics of different specialties that interest me so it is definitely something useful for me; doing it during the semester and juggling the academic workload looks to be difficult but I am sure it would be an unbelievably valuable experience if I decide to do it. I appreciated his talk and loved the reverse format. He mentioned that this learning style was very effective and while he didn’t explicitly mention what it was, I think the style was the Socratic method. If the students arrived at the answer themselves and instead of being told it, then they will be able to understand and reach that answer again in the future since they did it once.

The Rose Cafe with Sam Beck, a social and cultural anthropologist who is also the Director of the New York City Urban Semester Program, approached the session in a different manner from previous speakers. The topic of the night was advertised to be a discussion of the New York City Urban Semester Program (which, by the way sounds like a pretty cool program), but rather than simply providing a lecture and traditional talk of the program, he sought to engage all the attendees in a more personal way. In fact, he asked each of us to discuss what we were majoring in at Cornell and what our future goals and aspirations are, and then attempted to discuss how the New York City Urban Semester Program could be useful in the context of these academic and career goals. I found this approach to be more enjoyable, as the back-and-forth engagement we had with the speaker allowed us to hear many of Sam’s individual feelings and thoughts regarding a wide array of subjects, and we definitely discovered his wittiness and sense of humor :).

As each student talked about their studies and future goals, Sam offered a lot of feedback and advice that I feel an anthropologist is especially equipped to make. For example, he asked a lot of questions regarding what motivated us and why we were actually pursuing these academic and careers paths, and I think in general, people don’t necessarily spend enough time thinking about such important questions. Thus, for young people such as ourselves, it definitely is especially germane for us to think more critically about our current and future paths!

Last week’s Rose Cafe was very different from the previous Rose Cafe events I have attended. Typically, speakers try to elicit student participation through discussion questions, which, resulted in little response. However, Sam Beck directed his discussion on us students, asking us what plans, if any, we had for the future in terms of careers and other interests. Professor Beck emphasized the importance of the college experience; it’s more than just learning from textbooks and learning information word-for-word. College is about utilizing the multiple resources around you in order to gain as much of a fulfilling experience as possible. Professor Beck talked a lot about the Urban Semester experience offered here at Cornell. He talked about the importance of experimental learning in which we could directly engage with the community and experience our career interests firsthand, an opportunity that is not offered at all schools.

After this talk, I really thought about my own career interests and how I currently pursue and experience them. I realize how much reading and thinking I do, but more so, I realized how much action I lack. For me, as an ILR major, taking an Urban semester could be a great firsthand experience in the field of HR management and operations, which is where I aspire to take my skill set to. This talk was a great breath of air for me to take and realize what I needed to do next.

Last week, Rose Cafe was different from previous Cafe events. Usually, the Cafe sessions start with the speaker giving a presentation in their area of expertise and then opens up the floor for questions. However, last week, Sam Beck focused his talk on us, asking each of us to describe our career aspirations and interests. It was very interesting to learn more about the other students there, and definitely fostered a real sense of community within the Scholar program and Rose House in general.

Beck really emphasized that learning is more than memorizing facts and being able to recite them. He also emphasized that college is more than getting grades and a degree, but we must exploit the resources that Cornell offers us. One of these resources, if we are lucky enough to find one, is a mentor here at Cornell. A mentor is more than an advisor, they show a genuine interest in the development as an individual and as a student. This can be hard, especially at a large school. It can be hard to establish relationships with some professors, especially if the class is a large lecture with 400 other students who also may want to establish a relationship and get to know a professor. Beck’s talk was reassuring though, because his genuine interest in getting to know our aspirations and interests showed that professors are more invested in the lives of their students than most people would think. They want us to develop as people as well as learn the material they provide to us. This has changed my view of how to approach establishing relationships with professors or anyone else of authority. Establishing a relationship with a complete stranger can be somewhat intimidating, but Beck’s genuine interest in my aspirations within 5 minutes of simply being in the same room was comforting, as many professors here are genuinely invested in their students as Beck is.

Last Wednesday at Rose Cafe, Sam Beck came to introduce the Urban Semester Program with Engaged Cornell. Professor Beck is Social and Cultural Anthropologist with extensive field research experience in countries such as Iran, Austria, and Romania. The students in attendance probably expected Professor Beck to lead an overview of the Urban Semester Program and talk about his own experiences in experimental leaning; however, Professor Beck was more interested in learning about us, turning the conversation over to the students as we went around the room introducing ourselves and our major/future aspirations. It was especially nice to learn about the aspirations of the students of Rose House, it makes me realize again how diverse our interests are and the unique perspectives each person brings.

I thought I would take this opportunity to share where my interests have led me during my time here at Cornell. I am currently a junior in the College of Arts and Sciences majoring in economics, and I hope to go to medical school upon graduation. I am pursing medicine because it is a field dedicated to serving others and human compassion: it is amazing to think that at the end of the day, you could be somebody else’s hero. To me, there is no other field as diverse and dynamic as the field of medicine in the individual lives it touches and in its inexorable march towards progress through curiosity and research. As I am pursing medicine with a strong economics background, I am intrigued by the insights and tools economics offers to investigate questions relating to health, especially in the design of policy that affects health outcomes and the way our healthcare system runs. I hope to integrate my passions in both medicine and economics as a physician contributing to health economics scholarship.

Yesterday I had the pleasure of attending the Rose Cafe hosted by Sam Beck, a social and cultural anthropologist and Director of the New York City Urban Semester Program. This cafe focused very little on his experiences and expertise and more so on us, the audience– a very refreshing and slightly startling realization halfway through the talk.

We went around the room and each gave our major and aspirations for our futures. It was interesting how he grilled us. He pressed on and on with the question “what does that mean?”, which for a lot of us, meant I don’t know. It was so different to be continuously asked what is your specific goal for your future? What do you want to do? For me, I don’t know yet and I think that is okay. In lectures, we learn how things are suppose to be. And in my major, I think we also learn a little bit of what path we ‘should be’ heading down. I remember my first day of college the term “IB” was used constantly and that was what I thought my career aspiration was suppose to be. Now, I have developed more of an individualized goal.

Even so, I think Sam Beck makes us think of the bigger picture which is always a good thing. Sometimes we get stuck in just doing the monotony of schoolwork. He allowed me to think about different options which I am thankful for. One big point he made was to come talk to him. Send him an email. He genuinely was interested in each of us which made his advice all the more worthwhile.

This Wednesday’s Rose Cafe was conducted by Professor Sam Beck, a social and cultural anthropologist from the College of Human Ecology, who discussed about the urban semester program.

To be honest, this Rose House Cafe was quite different from what I had anticipated. I thought that as an anthropologist,Professor Beck would be more focused on the academic aspects of the Urban Semester program and perhaps cover some of his own researches as a scholar. Instead, this talk was more about the conversation between the speaker and the audience; as each of us got a chance to talk about our interests and career goals. On the one hand, I benefited from the career advice Professor Beck gave me. As a city and regional planning major, I always want to travel around the world to pick up planning projects to do. Professor Beck suggested that I should consider taking positions in the United Nations and maybe learn more languages. On the other hand, I also learned a lot from listening to other people’s interests and goals, which exhibited a very diverse range of choices and options, ranging from medicine to arts. I think the biggest takeaway is that no matter what subject(s) one chooses to study, there will always be career options; and it is always possible to combine one’s passions with academic pursuits.

Another topic I found useful was about how to utilize one’s academic advisor. Personally, I have never been to my advisor’s office hour. Partly because my advisor has never replied to my emails for meeting with him. Professor suggested that in order to get advisor’s attention, we should first pay attention to them, such as searching your advisor online and look at their research interests. The idea is that once your advisor feels like you are interested in their stuff, they will take interest in you as well. I think this is an important strategy and I will try to write more effective emails (i.e. contain what I know about my advisor’s academic interests) and see if I could finally get to meet him.

This Wednesday night I went to the Rose Café with Sam Beck, Social & Cultural Anthropologist – “A Dialogue with Students on Engaged Cornell”, unfortunately I got to the event I little late, but I am happy that I attended.

At one point of the talk one student asked Mr. Beck about how to get mentors during one’s college time. Mr. Beck was being very forthcoming that he think college advising is a failure, since the student usually don’t actively seek advising, and the faculty don’t have incentive to mentor a particular student, since mentoring someone is a big investment of time and energy. Someone in the audience commented that to let a faculty invest in the student, the student must invest in the faculty first. Now I totally agree with that point, I feel that for me personally, the faculty that I have been lucky to work with and have been benefited from are those who I invest a large amount of time getting to know in the first place. There is a professor in Johnson school who I found on Cornell website and reached out through email. We ended up having a one-hour conversation and I asked her many advice about going into finance and finding internship. Then she brought me on board with the undergraduate stock pitch competition and women investing conference, both are amazing events and I have learned some much from it, also making some great friends. In the future I will continue to do more of the work myself before expecting anyone would invest time in me.