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Cameron Haffner Featured Posts On campus The Freshman Experience

La Vie En LC

When did you make your first friend here at Wagner? Maybe it was during a freshmen orientation event. Or possibly you bumped into them while you were hauling your sixteen packs of energy drinks in your dorm on move-in day. Or perhaps you met your ol' partner in crime within your own freshmen Learning Community (LC)!

Every Wagner college student is more than familiar with Learning Communities because, well, they're a big part of your academic experience here at Wagner. These Learning Communities are designed to engage students in a specific topic through academic study and community outreach . From freshmen LCs, to intermediate LCs, to senior LCs, the Wagner Plan ensures that you've got your LC fix by the time you're done here.

"Yeah uh that sounds great Cameron, but I'm, like, a cyborg so new people and friends are scary"

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Friendship does not compute

No need to fear fellow reader! Because if there's a place to make friends, it's within your first freshmen Learning Community. Not only will you be taking classes with these folks but you'll also be taking trips to unique areas around New York that pertain to your LC's overall topic. So it's best that you get comfy and familiar with the strangers joining in this adventure with you.

And believe me, it's quite an adventure.

Your humble blogger has had the opportunity to take part in the magical LC 15: Spirit Meets Practice in the Visual and Performing Arts. This LC involves learning about art and music along with identifying their parallels through research and performance/museum trips.

And boy oh boy, it has been an engaging and exceptional experience thus far.

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Adventures with the New York Philharmonic

I mean, I'll be blunt when I say that I didn't originally find music and canvas art particularly interesting (at least not from a technical level). However, my LC has managed to drain that silly, clueless perspective out of my puny little brain.

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Adventures with the Metropolitan Museum of Art

Music and art is more than just something to marvel conceptually and more of a craft to be analyzed and contemplated in order to consider the specific aspects that help evoke those crazy emotional responses we get when we listen to Gustav Holst's, "The Planets" or from looking at a Pablo Picasso painting.

Sorry for burdening you folks with my pitiful run-on sentences but if there's anything to take away from this it's that there's a whole other world of ideas and skill that exists within the universe of these artistic mediums.

And whaddya know if it wasn't for LC 15 for enriching me with this super dandy outlook. The kind of outlook that transcends respecting art and music on the surface. I am not an Art or Music major by any means and don't intend on studying in either field.

Yet, I never mind engaging myself in a completely new educational experience outside of my interests. Who knows what will be next. Maybe theoretical physics, Japanese politics, African swallow flight patterns, or maybe even the art of pizza. Most likely pizza.

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Special Topics: Intro to Pizza

So whether it's your first LC experience or even your last, be sure to keep your mind open to what it has to offer even if it doesn't directly involve your own interests.

There's plenty of LCs to choose from so go ahead and pick your adventure, whatever it may be. And don't forget to make a few friends along the way, kids.