Museums and Culture

It’s been a pretty eventful semester if I do say so myself.  From the first day of classes to today, my “final final” as I call it, I’ve jam-packed my schedule to fit in as many extracurricular activities as possible.  In this blog I want to concentrate on areas that I have not really focused on in the past.

One such example of a previously non-mentioned topic is my involvement with Queens College Hillel.  I wouldn’t consider myself a religious Jew of any sort – I haven’t been to temple in ages, and until coming to college, my family had stopped holding Shabbat on a regular basis.  And, prior to actually beginning my studies at QC my impression was that Hillel was an overall Orthodox bunch of students, I really had no desire to be involved.  The funny thing is, though, that apparently the Orthodox Jewish population on campus is only 1/4 of the entire Jewish population!  Anyway, my involvement all changed when I found out about a small grassroots, progressive Jewish movement taking form with the leadership of Alyssa Blumenthal – I would call her a mentor of mine.  With her help, I was introduced not only to progressive Judaism, but also Orthodoxy.

Men often hate each other because they fear each other; they fear each other because they don’t know each other; they don’t know each other because they cannot communicate; they cannot communicate because they are separated. -Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr.

CERRU, the Center for Ethnic, Racial, & Religious Understanding, hosted its first annual Innovation Exchange panel featuring eleven notable professionals in today’s progressing world.  The format for the exchange was, in honor of the date 12-12-12, a twelve minute lecture from each of these inspirational figures.  Topics discussed ranged from religion, economics, social, and cultural matters.

Here is a link to a youtube playlist of all of the speakers from this event!

All Queens College and CUNY students are urged to fill out teacher and course evaluation forms towards the end of every semester.  They are encouraged to do this with the bribe of $15 worth of Q-Bucks for printing and photocopying.  For me, however, I think it’s really important to let my professors know how I enjoyed or disliked a class, and how they might improve in the future.  That being said, I thought I’d do a brief public evaluation of the first class I ever stepped foot in my first semester of college – Introduction to Theatre Design with Professor Meghan Healey.