Author Archives: kj295

Passion

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In podcast 10.28 (Fellow Interview: Rose Buzz with Julia Felippe and Andre Kessler 3/24/2021) I  strongly resonated with the idea that it is important for women to get involved in tech because during my internships I noticed that having people from different backgrounds contributes to a variety of perspectives helping us develop a better and more efficient solution to any problem for a wider audience. People from different cultures always makes the product better for everyone. Additionally, I strongly agree with Andre Kessler who recommended choosing what your are passionate about to study because you will always be good enough to make money and your passion will lead you through bad times always keeping you happy.  This is very good advice as many of my classes I have picked were out of interest and passion. In fact, these classes have actually become the fields I ended up getting internships in!

The other speaker,  Julia Felippe said you will question what you are doing but always remember you have plenty of time to do what you want so reflect and think about opportunities and talk to others about it. This is something I resonate with because a while back I decided to do some research experience with my major department. This is because solving problems that have never been solved before is a very motivating experience for me and after talking to my Professors about it they said it is not late to start on the track of research and even start getting prepared to apply for PhD next fall! Hence, it is never late to start!

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Cultural Intelligence

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The Cornell Johnson Museum event showed us a lot of treasures. One that stood out to me was the photo of the walking man sculpture. It shows a person with a very slim body unable to walk properly. It reflects the holocaust and the atomic bombs that damaged people a lot physically. It also showed me the power museums have in maintaining history and amplifying civil discourse. In fact just this past year I went to a museum to learn about the culture in Middle East and I was amazed by how they had carefully maintained old artifacts as that gave me a much better and stronger education than just reading about it in a textbook. This is another reason why I believe that for anyone studying history museums contain a wealth of knowledge.

Pattern recognition

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I decided to sign up for the chess meet because I was inspired by Beth’s story in Queen’s Gambit. However, watching chess is very different than playing it. When it was time for me to play chess games I realized that the people who did very well and constantly won had great pattern recognition skills. For example in one of my games my opponent actually told me he had planned out all my possible moves and counter attacks against them in one of the plays! Well, he was a chess geek so I wasn’t surprised. But from this experience I have learnt that playing chess can improve my abstract thinking that can help me in more mathematical based classes as identifying patterns is always important.

Learning Made Fun

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Using Skribbl.io as a platform for the game was very fun! At first when my round came I didn’t even know what certain terms meant yikes! But slowly I learnt that the simpler and more concise the drawing the faster people seem to catch on. In fact, I think this game would be a great way to visual concepts being learnt in a class. For example I recently tried it in one of my theory classes by drawing diagrams out and now whenever I see the term appear anywhere I instantly recall the visualisation and can remember all the details very well!

Talent doesn’t discriminate

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After seeing episode 2 of Queen’s Gambit I learnt that women never had it easy back then. First Beth did not have the money to enter the tournament and was told only “coloured” girls get jobs. This was shocking to me as it made me reflect on how prominent racism was back then. Even when she enters the tournament she is told there is no women’s section again showing the sexist nature of chess back then. In fact this episode made me reflect on the learnings in one of my social studies classes where we learnt how hard it was for coloured people and women to achieve success in the US.

Learning with Kahoot!

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The trivia on Saturday taught me a lot of facts about Cornell I didn’t know. For example the first building built in Cornell was Cascadilla Hall! More importantly this fun session made me reflect on how well a social platform like Kahoot can promote a more positive learning environment. For example, in high school, for my foreign language class like Spanish we would often use Kahoot to promote healthy competition among students as to who knew the Spanish vocabulary the best. Now looking back I still vividly remember the words I got wrong and got right as kahoot events were so prominent due to the competition. Hence, I feel that such trivia events should be incorporated in lectures as well!

The power of listening

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In the DIY Old Time Radio session learning about how radio is so powerful that it can reach a huge audience much more quickly than other formats really stood out to me. In fact, reflecting on this, since I travel by car pretty often I hear the radio frequently. Usually it is music whilst in other cases it is podcasts, etc. Listening to radio I realized that I learn a lot by just hearing the lyrics or what the people at the other end of the radio have to say even if I am not actively paying attention. In fact like discussed during the session our ears can foster our imagination much better than our eyes which I strongly agree with because even in today’s virtual environment listening to lectures rather than reading a textbook helps me understand the course material much better!

Adapting

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Podcast 2.10 opened my eyes to the struggles and challenges teachers face to make their classroom learning as productive as possible given the changing times. It was interesting to see how Professors are making zoom as close as possible to learning in person. Learning that Professor Schwarz tries to utilize APP (attendance preparation participation) in his classes made me reflect on my own zoom experiences where putting students in breakout rooms has helped us in developing socially as well as allowed learning from different perspectives! Apart from the Covid-19 changes there were also the impeachment trials and capital hill riot events. Prof Shirley Samuels described the videos of the riots as teaching students how to use the American flag as a weapon which is not a good symbol for education. This reminded me of one of my liberal arts classes last fall where before diving into the topic we would discuss current events that relate to our subject and what is right or wrong about them. Had our professor not done that we as students could easily have misunderstood the meaning behind current political events.

Awareness

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After listening to podcast Ross Buzz 2.24, I realised that I have really no clue about the struggles many people who work full time face. For example, the idea of employees getting punished to leave their job due to covid-19 was very suprising to me as I never expected people who personally decide to leave their job to face such discrimination. It also reminded me of why so many labor laws exist and why it is important to respect anyone who is working 9-5 to put food on the table. Additionally, I was shocked to learn that an African American who closed his eyes once in a 12 hr shift was immediately terminated as compared to white workers who were given many chances. I myself have African American friends who work full time right now but never realized that facing such discrimination is a very real thing for them. It made me realize that it is very important to be empathetic to everybody. Also, after listening to the podcast I learnt how devastating it can be for people who lose their jobs. For example, one of my close relatives recently lost their job and I thought that would be no big deal due to their savings and all. However, after getting back in touch with them I realized there are many other factors that are involved such as the struggle of being able to get a new job given the competition as well as being able to provide for the whole family given the rise of covid illnesses. To conclude, I realized how important it is to be more aware of other people’s situation before developing a certain viewpoint of them as you never know what the other person has to go through.