While initiating the first step of the Community Service project, I realized quickly that the brunt of this schoolwork, coupled with my part-time job week, could easily take the better of me. That’s when I decided that, more than anything, I needed a staff member to encourage me and help me to organize my trains of thought into one steady station. Thus, I began to visit Mr. Medina, not for any strict academic advice, but rather just for help with reacting to the new environment that was Baruch. I also met with Dr. Locke a couple of times to discuss the way i’d been feeling at the time. i’ve thought about heading to the starr career development center, but i haven’t gotten around to it; however, i do feel that it would be an awesome place to get my future plans on track and get everything done that i need to. as far as the student organizations go, i haven’t found anything that i’m really interested in yet… i did play for the baruch winter concert, and that was pretty cool. i feel like the only kind of place i’d feel i’d belong in is either the japanese club, but most of the kids want to learn the language so they can watch and understand anime… not really my cup of tea. i feel that i would belong pretty much anywhere i can perform and play music. when i find something like that, i will jump in feet-first. i feel like experiences with the faculty and performing at the baruch concert really gave me an edge in this school because it taught me, above all, that things at baruch are accessible, and not closed off to anyone. it also helped me to feel a personal connection towards the community service project and giving back to the community that gave me so much. after taking FRO, i feel that community service is really just the way any given individual silently converses with his town, his school, his neighbors, and expresses his appreciation for the ways in which they helped him grow as a living, loving person.
did i invite you to my barbecue?
so why you all up in my grill, yo?
being a baruch scholar, i have finally come to realize that a free tuition is not a free lunch (we pay for lunch every day, anyway.) and that not paying tuition with money doesn’t mean you’re not paying tuition, because they will take something from you in return in the form of your sanity. however, as scholars at baruch, and even as people, we have a responsibility to go out into the community because we have been given that free tuition, our laptops, grand learning privileges, opportunities to form relationships with people who will, in less than a decade, become powerful, highly-paid investment bankers… jokes aside, we also have a need, as humans, to help each other with the benefits we have been given. many people fail to realize it, and i hate that. i wish people knew that people should actually have the idea that hey, maybe this person could use a little bit of help, and it will make his or her life more enjoyable because we are all fundamentally the same and just need some food and someone to talk to. i feel like regardless of benefits or adversity, people should always be doing things for each other, but we’re all just thinking about how disastrous the quakes in “hate-y” were and how they should get somebody to help whoever lives over there, but not them. community service is not $230 you throw at PBS for the haiti effort, it’s about establishing a link with someone at the most basic cognitive level, because we humans are all empirically alike. thus, my point is, we all are indeed responsible for the good of our respective communities, and what we do for the communities we live in will determine the state of those communities, because they only exist, really, if the people who live in them care for them as well as each other and take responsibility for them.
HOW MUCH IS THAT DOG IN THE WINDOW
BECAUSE I THINK IT MIGHT BE MINE.
alright, so the first thing on my to-do list on this blog is to change this font (DID THAT 🙂 ), because one thing i really hate doing is using an embellishing font to make myself look more intelligent or like i know what i’m doing, because i don’t, and i try not to look more intelligent than i am. i don’t like t’s that curve on the bottom or anything of the sort because those t’s are pose(u)rs. i also dread the thought of capitalizing anything. except for the word God, when referring to Him. it’s not that i’m trying to give Him any special treatment or anything, it’s just that growing up reading it that way set it in my eyes to look correct only when written with a capitalized G. sorry if you guys don’t agree with me. now that we’ve got that out of the way, let’s check out the very first journal assignment!
also, i’m gonna be using strikethrough to cross out things i write then deem redundant and unnecessary, like idioms and stuff. i’m trying to recognize which parts of speech (for myself) are useful and which parts are not.
“Help us get to know you. Describe experiences that have shaped who you are. How
have they defined your values and your beliefs? What are your expectations as a college student? What are your hopes and concerns for your first semester? [250 words]”
gee, i’m not sure if i can do that… 250 words is quite a small cage to fit in.
well, here goes!
i was raised protestant, but then i realized that humans might not be the last or the greatest race to exist, so i’m not too keen on that whole ‘we have been chosen by God’ nonsense. but i do suppose it’s given me a preference to doing good to others. it’s not that i want to affirm my salvation, because if life is the way christians say it is, then i’m definitely going to hell. but if i am, then it’s all the way for sure. i’m not gonna sissy out and change teams on my deathbed, namsayin’? but i do like helping people just to see that smile on that beautiful face that God may or may not have created, which in turn brightens other peoples’ days. i’m not hating on religion though. it allows people to unlock their greatest potentials; it’s just when they’re rubbing it in my face, especially when i’d been skeptic of their purposes in the first place, i realize i want to sympathize with them less, which brings me to another value i hold dear. to put it simply, if i have a habit or hobby, in all cases the thing i have to watch out for is that my habits and hobbies do not become a liability for other people, especially regarding hazardous habits, such as tobacco/alcohol/drug intake, or just annoying hobbies like playing music really loud. i don’t enjoy being a menace to my friends’ fun or health, so i take a cigarette at a safe distance where my immensely toxic secondhand smoke will not reach them. now, as for my expectations (i have no room for more words), i would like to pass with a 3.5 gpa and travel and enjoy college life and good food and good tobacco. the end! 🙂