Monthly Archives: September 2010

Well, I cant really think of any experiences which changed who I am except for Dec 18, 2009 when I received my acceptance letter. I had went through high school absolutely hating the routine tedious and meaningless work. I actually enjoyed hating high school. Then I received proof that I was finally going to leave what I considered to be a Gothic styled prison, and then it hit me, I don’t want to leave. I was just baffled because I couldn’t believe I was finally going to leave. I became more lax. I have been known as callous, and had strict morals on issues that had nothing to do with me, but it seems as if knowing I was going to leave tech just made me happy. I no longer cared to be bothered with values, I became indifferent. Now I can’t say I am completely indifferent, but I don’t concern myself with issues I cannot resolve. Sure I am still callous to some extent but not as forced; I tend to no longer start arguments for the sake of raising questions and arguing.

I expected college to be more enjoyable, a release from routine and tedious meaningless work. I was terribly wrong, if anything there is more tedious work that still has no meaning. I would never have guessed a cuny would be so arduous. I can only hope that once I am finally given a choice after the first semester then I will experience what college is like because currently I am disappointed. I expected to be in classes that taught me something even remotely necessary or beneficial to know. Sadly, I can only say this about one of my classes. I also expected to be in a completely new environment with new people and new experiences. For the most part that is true, and I have been enjoying it, but it still disturbs me that I feel as if I attend Baruchlyn Tech. What I expect to happen later is I will make a schedule that works for me and interests me. Something tells me even that wont happen due to core requirements which always tend to be the worst classes. I have come to realize that undergrad is an unnecessary buffer between high school and grad school that has to be endured.

I hope to finish my first semester with a 4.0 and an interesting schedule to look forward to in the second semester. My only concern is I wont hit that 4.0 because some classes make most days unbearable and my horrendous schedule doesn’t help my cause.

EDITED -8 days later

I went back to tech and spoke to my teachers. They too agreed that having 3 tests a semester and a final plus mandatory attendance is high school all over again, not how college is supposed to be. Just as I expected, they told me that it should be a midterm, final, and voluntary attendance except for science classes due to labs. Perhaps this will be the case, my upperclassmen friends have given me the impression that this is the case half of the time.  I don’t believe in attending a class in which I have covered the subject matter but was not given the AP credit for or any class in which the subject matter  is too easy and class is unnecessary.
Reflecting back at high school, I realized that I failed to make it more than just tedious meaningless work until it was time to go and I told myself that I wouldn’t let college be the same. Come to think of it, I am not letting myself repeat the last 4 years again. It isn’t just about the work load(routine and tedious meaningless work). I seemed to have emphasized too much on that part. I noticed that high school, and apparently this college system, works in a cycle; you have periods of absolutely little to no work, then suddenly 2 weeks later you have 2 projects and 3 tests all in a week. When I last wrote in this blog, I was in that week of too much to do too little time.

So to revise my previous answer, I do not know what to expect. I will make the best with what I have. Plus, the classes I found useless and arbitrary actually taught me stuff, not based on the class’ subject, but more of a new perspective. Perhaps undergrad is a necessary buffer just to give kids time to mature and open their eyes to new things they previously despised with a passion.

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Hello, my name is James Cheng and it is a pleasure to meet you. I reach out my hand but nobody reaches back. This has been my fear for a very long time, reaching out and falling short before I manage to reach anyone. I do not when this fear first came up but I know I was not born with it. I remember being timid when I was very young. My mother would always say to me, “James, you have to be more confident, you’re going to be a man someday, and you will have to support your own family and your parents.” My mother telling me to be a man, well I suppose someone had to say it.

My father, for as long as I can remember, always worked until late hours of the night. So I only got to see him once a week, on Tuesday, but I always had fun when I saw him. He used to take me to the park and push the swing for me. After swinging for a while, I would get tired and he would take me home for a family dinner.  There was not that much to talk about back then so we were mostly silent during the walk home.  But when we did talk, I remember the conversations were very short because I was not that fluent in Chinese and he was not fluent in English. As time went on, my English improved while my Chinese worsened. Pretty soon, short conversations turned in to no conversations, simply a greeting, “Baba.” In my freshman year of high school I had basically forgotten all my Chinese and everything I said was in English. English had become my first language and the language I deferred to when I was talking to anyone. But when I saw my father, I could not say a word, I knew that if I said something, he would respond in Chinese and I would not be able to reply. So whenever I saw my dad, I would simply smile and pretend like I was doing my homework.

As I withdrew from my father, my father withdrew from me. After a while, he stopped talking to me as well and when we saw each other, he would smile and wave hello and that was it. I was completely okay with this until I had Creative Nonfiction in my senior year. My teacher would talk about trying to understand other points of view. This reminded me of my father. I was always thinking about how I would look if I could not respond to what he was saying but I never thought about it from his perspective. How would he feel if I said something and he could not respond? Would he feel embarrassed like I would? Would he feel more embarrassed? That was when I realized that it was not the language barrier that kept us from talking to each other; it was we. No matter how difficult it might be to respond, I realized that it is much worse to not even start the conversation. If the conversation never begins we would never know what might or might not happen.

I will push myself to reach out not just to my father but to other people. And if they don’t reach back that’s fine. But, hopefully, they will.

Welcome to Blogs@Baruch!

This is your first post. Edit or delete it, then start blogging.

Welcome to Blogs@Baruch!

This is your first post. Edit or delete it, then start blogging.

Welcome to Blogs@Baruch!

This is your first post. Edit or delete it, then start blogging.

Welcome to Blogs@Baruch!

This is your first post. Edit or delete it, then start blogging.

These high school years fleet by in a matter of seconds. what i had done brought me to the path i am now and where i am going.

Thinking back, a lot has happened to me over those past four years.  These memories are definitely unforgettable.  Many times, I look back on these memories and see how they shaped me to become who I am today.  Although I often say how some of the things I did were stupid or dumb but I know that without them, I would not be where I am today. In life, people can walk several different paths.  For the most part, it is the general consensus to choose the path that gets you to the end the faster– the one that leads you to your goal in the shortest amount time but sometimes, it is the path with the twists and turns that makes everything the all the more meaningful.

With everyone walking on the path of life, wouldn’t it be crowded if we all decided to converge on one highway? this is why we each have our little own detour to unknown, magical places that we call our own.  these oasis of my road of life defines my journey, and knowing and accepting it will allow me to tread more steadily and walk with a better stride that I can claim as my own. And recognizing these falls and trips I have made will give me the courage to stand back up and keep walking. But ultimately, no matter where i walk or how I walk, as long as I am going where I want to, its fine.  ”Omne ens est Verum” – Being is true.

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Hey all, I’m Spencer Wen, but I hope you know that if you’re reading my blog. Part of me is still a little shocked that I’m in college: I’m not a kid anymore. Doing household chores in my dorm, taking on the full responsibility of schoolwork, and living by myself is all new, exciting, and fun, but it’s also a little unsettling at the same time.

Among my expectations of being a college student is a college life. I know that you shouldn’t expect to be living the life as depicted on TV, but I do hope that it’s new and different from a high school social life. I love the fact that people are a lot more open and outgoing in college – sometimes too much as a matter of fact, but it’s still better than people who refuse to associate outside of their own small clique. I also expect to put in a more effort towards school – going to college has awakened an anxiety about my future career plans, and as a result, I hope to take school more seriously in college than I did in high school.

My hopes for my first semester of college include a 4.0 GPA (I’m not lying, even though this blog post is a little late?), but by far, my most important goal is being able to maintain a busy college life. There’s classes and schoolwork taking up a major portion of my life, but I also need to find and keep a job to pay for my own expenses, as I really don’t want to ask my parents for spending money. I want to learn to cook – not only to save money, but also to stay healthy and give myself the proper nutrition I need for sports and martial arts. Which leads to something else I expect will take up a large amount of my time: basketball, taekwondo, and weight training. And after considering all academic, professional, and personal obligations, there’s still a social life that demands its fair share of my time as well. All in all, I believe that time management will be one of my most challenging undertakings this semesters, but it also has the potential to be my most rewarding undertaking as well.

As a high school freshman and sophomore, I was rather awkward socially, although people did make their attempts to reach out to me. I guess part of it was coming out of a bad middle school experience, and I was hesitant to allow people to get close to me as a result. But living in your own little shell, your own little world, gets rather boring after you’ve explored every corner of it, and I decided to become more outgoing sometime during the end of my junior year. Unfortunately, high school social life is largely determined by cliques, and although I was never really shunned by anyone, I was never really accepted either. So I learned to live my social life outside of my high school. I made new friends when I took up taekwondo, when I joined a teen basketball league, and when I went to summer camps. Although I know I’m not perfect, I also believe that I’ve come a long way socially, and I think that things are a lot better now than they were two years ago, especially considering that there’s only room for improvement.