Monthly Archives: November 2010

Honestly, I don’t know what my role is, whether in the Baruch community or in the broader community. I mean I know bits and pieces but I can’t seem to piece together the full picture. I know that in Baruch, at least part of my role is to study hard and to maintain a fair GPA. Making a friend here and there would not hurt either but aside from that I don’t know anymore.

When I was in high school, my main purpose was to study hard and try to maintain a good GPA. Other than that, my high school life was just hanging out with friends and killing time. I could have done more during my time in high school but I was being lazy. I did not know what to do and did not feel like getting out of my comfort zone and finding out.

This time, I want to do thing differently. So for my freshman year I signed up for a number of different clubs in Baruch. I went to the information session for a couple of them and found something that I was interested in. Right now, I devote a good portion of my time outside the classroom with my chosen club.

As for my role in the broader community, I think I should volunteer my time to helping my community. But I do not want to just get involved in anything; I want to spend my time working for a cause that I genuinely believe in. As of right now, I do not know that cause is but I will volunteer regardless and see if I cannot find something that I like to do and is beneficial to the community.

Community Service is the allocation of human labor by an individual or a group for the benefit of the public or its institutions. This should not be confused with altruism, which is the practice of unselfish concern/service to parallel one’s devotion to the welfare of other human beings. This misconception is the crux of my ambivalent discontent when approaching community service, whose participants are vastly non-volunteers being compelled to act by government, school, possibility of profit, or the courts. This by no means should put across the idea that community service is without beneficial effects for the human populace, but it seems in most cases to preserve its own structured bureaucracy of purported altruism than to actually promote a ubiquitous sense of magnanimity.

Perhaps it is the nature of our society or maybe it is this inconsistency between the facets of community service and altruism, but one feels there exists or should exist an apparatus of good will that disseminates proactive human labor in a more efficient way than the network of organized public works. This I believe is the implementation of direct action, which is a far simpler yet more rewarding operation. If you’d would like to see your block cleaner, clean it; if you want to read a cooler magazine, make it and distribute it; if you want to have a music festival in your neighborhood, organize it. This mode of direct action is more potent than community service, not merely in its capacity to be far more rewarding, but the action itself requires collaboration and fosters community just by the nature of its implementation. This is unlike community service, which treats community as if it were something dependent on the existence of organization, in that it acknowledges that altruism and beauty are more transcendent in human nature than the latter. We create beauty for the pleasantness it adds to everyday existence; we create beauty for the sake of sanity. Direct action facilitates and preserves humanity, while community service can only serve people as much as its rigidity can allow. Some positive action requires a larger presence than small community planning of course, but while expanding the scope of one’s undertaking it is imperative to not stray far from the paradigm of individual good will towards the calculated network of tax-deductable magnanimity.

But now above all that, I hum jazz tunes to myself, stressing the spaces in between the sounds, as the opportune gusts blow the ash off the end of the cigarette. And now below the skyline of the city, automobiles rush about, cascading through the sieve-streets like granules of human expedience, whilst those selfsame tall buildings shout the reverie of collective man. I pitch the cigarette and stand serene, hands a-clasped, leaning forward, whispering to myself the words of an old mentor; “…and with joy you realize for the first time, thinking’s just like not thinking—So I don’t have to think anymore”.  Then in the abundant fullness of the void, out stepped the realization of the equivalent mutual opposites, the knowing of life and the muteness of death, and my own conceptualizing of truth as the fulcrum in the center. As I come to, I knocked over my drink yet stand holy in the dense air, on the empty roof. Unfortunately, these sojourns into spiritual solace of late only served as ephemeral evasions of the ever-pursuing cranial claustrophobia. They fail to destroy the perseverance of the contradiction of beliefs and pragmatism, and also to reveal the true nature of altruism in the context of governing bodies.

My current role in the Baruch community is SLAVE OF WORK just kidding but seriously, studying for the business midterm was not fun.

I actually feel like I have a duty to keep up a good work ethic, and maintain the respect of the Baruch Honors program. I owe it to myself, to my peers and to my professors (and John) to do everything that I’m supposed to. The program has gained such a highly esteemed reputation because of its students. Each one of us represents a piece of the school, and it should be our task to make the school look its best (even though we don’t have working escalators).

Serving my community can mean whatever I want or need it to mean (provided that it still pertains to the actual idea of service). It’s a huge privilege to be able to live and work in the type of community we all live and work in. So it is our responsibility to give back. The typical answer is to say “we can all do community service at a soup kitchen” or something like that. While that is true, it’s not the only thing that counts as service. When I can’t find my syllabus when I need it, I can always count on asking a friend to tell me what this assignment actually was (shout out to Anastasia). That qualifies as service, just being there to help out when you are needed. It doesn’t necessarily have to be a life or death situation, or help for the poor (it also CAN be, please don’t think I’m making fun of the poor..). It can just be help for someone who needs help on their own personal level.

Community service has always been a regular part of my life.  I was very active in high school in many of the clubs and participated in volunteer organizations and internships over the summer.  I joined many clubs such as the ECO club, give aid give hope and red cross club.  I heavily participated in most of the events of these clubs.  There would be annual events every year such as the Breast Cancer Walk and AIDS walk.  I see the community service requirements held by Baruch not as a nuisance but an opportunity to make my self better and get to know my community more.  In many of these clubs I had a leadership role that may involve simple tasks such as collecting money to a more grand task such as organizing an event.  I also participated in volunteering outside of school.  I joined a political internship over the summer promoting political awareness and the importance of voting.  Volunteering outside of school gave me i higher sense of responsibility.  I was not doing this for college applications but to build my character.  Through these events i met new people, developed leadership skills and learned something new everyday.  I want to possess these same characteristic throughout my college years in Baruch and the honors program.  This quality of leadership is a necessity in today’s world of cut throat business, something that I want to pursue in life.

Baruch honors program offers more opportunities than I can dream of in a public school.  I spend four years at a CUNY campus and I was extremely surprise by the environment of Baruch, it was a wonderful surprise.  It is lively and full of people here and I am trying to find my spot on this campus.  But it is hard to find a place for myself in such big campus, at High School, it was easier because there was only 104 student and I was the crazy Asian girl.  so who am I at Baruch?  I was surprise to get accepted by the Honors program because it was extremely difficult to get in.  Now that I am in the honors program, I am not sure what my role will be.  But I know that I have to try my best because the worst types of failure are those who did not try.  There are great amount of resource being offer to me and I cannot let those go to waste.  It has only being few months since school started, but I feel like I have already change a lot and I can not see my future clearly but I hope I end up happy even if it is a desk job in a cubicle.

I’m a mother; I like to take care of other people because it gives me the feeling that I am useful.  As I was growing up, I went through a phase of being a bad girl.  But I was lucky to have a mentor that can help me grow out of it and become a wonderful adult.  All children need a positive influence in their life, either at home or somewhere else.  I hope that one day I can be a positive mentor to somebody and help him or her through life.  I hope I can make a positive impact on somebody’s life like the way my mentor made an impact on mine.   Maybe one day I can become a teacher, teaching a subject I love, mentoring my students, and traveling around the world.  It sounds like a bright future.

I have not found my role. To make a whimsical reference to theater, I am auditioning. I know what is expected of me. I have the script. I have yet to make it my own. It’s a hurdle.  It’s a mix of little eccentricities that create the perfect storm.  Everyone takes change differently, and I apparently don’t do well at all.

According to the Myer Briggs personality assessment, I am an ENFP. (Champion). Why would I take such a test? A test may come up once or twice in a lifetime, but I hear about it repeatedly. So I decide to succumb to coincidence and take the test. If you take anything away from this reading, please do remember that to confuse coincidence with fate or signs is to confuse flour with asbestos.  Don’t do it.

While I doubt the validity of the test, I can certainly go for the role of an idealist champion.  I’ll take the liberty to pat myself on the back and go as far as say that I have the gusto, the knack, and the pure Dariya-ness that is necessary for an idealist champion.  What it comes down to is execution. It’s easy to be a beautiful mind. Being able to think means nothing without contribution.  As the good ol’ Russian proverb goes, Аво́сь да как-нибу́дь до добра́ не доведу́т.

What will the idealist champion contribute? Joviality maybe. An interesting dinner conversation for sure. Something that will change the Baruch script as we know it? Maybe.  Too many questions and too many possibilities, which call for action! So stay tuned and take notes. This will be epic.

Current status: wrapped in blanket in a terribly cold room at 4 in the morning. Now, one may ask, “James, what can you possibly be doing staying up till 4 in the morning?” That is a very good question.

Well, like many before me, I am not quite so clear on my role as a Baruch Scholar. In fact, I feel rather ambivalent to my current position. On one hand, I am doing great in class so far and I’m sure this scholarship and education will pay off well in the end. On the other hand, the true scholar in me is feeling very wary about where this path will lead, and certain professors of mine are not easing the caution by constantly pointing out how the primary purpose of this school and most education in general is to train students to be good little cogs in the machine. I would like to fancy myself a fairly unique individual, but something deep down makes me dread that the path laid out before me will make me lose some of that individuality and I will end up some suit in a cubicle complaining about what he could have been. Tapping away at a keyboard at 4 in the morning as I take a sip from a mug of chocolate milk so I may stay awake long enough to finish an assignment is certainly not helping me believe this fate is far from reality.

But perhaps its my fatigued brain’s delirium that is making me feel so uncommonly pessimistic, so let’s take a step back and walk down the more idealistic side, which so conveniently segues into the next topic of community service. One of the things I have wanted to be most of all in my life was to be a hero, someone that people respected and admired for reasons worthy of respect and admiration. This desire manifested itself in my younger years as an overactive imagination rife with images of heroic escapades and battles of good and evil. As I grew older, the idea of me becoming a wandering swordsman through the deserted wastelands of downtown Jersey City, delivering justice amongst a violent and crime-ridden anarchistic state, became more and more unlikely to achieve. Instead, I saw such people as Bill Gates and Warren Buffett, who have all of the money in the world at their disposal, yet don’t flaunt it and instead try to improve the world through their philanthropy instead. I suppose that’s one of the main drives that spurs me to become financially successful in the future, so I might be able to make the world a better place, not through climactic battles with the super-powered tyrants of a dystopian world, but through throwing enough money at a problem that it eventually decides it can stop causing trouble for the poor and downtrodden and instead packs its bags and moves to a nice suburb or something.

Then again, I could always combine both my childhood dreams of heroic crime-fighting and current dreams of money-fueled philanthropy and become Batman.

It’s really amazing how lucky we all are. I think about it every day, specifically why I don’t deserve all the good fortune I have. As of right now, I think I’m the definition of wasted potential. I got into this Honors Program at a very prestigious and wonderful business college…and I’m not so sure that I want to go into business.  In fact, I’m pretty certain that I DON’T want to. What a jerk, right? I could have just as easily gone to another school and given someone the opportunity that I have here. Opportunity is the key word here, as I’ve been given so many opportunities throughout my life and I can’t help but think that I’m either wasting it or I don’t deserve it. I guess one of the main things that I can do here as a Baruch Scholar is to succeed and really try to not put anyone’s time, money, or effort to waste. I don’t want people to think of me as a drain, I want people to think that I helped out, that I was part of the solution and not the problem. It’s almost as though guilt is the main driving force that pushes my focus on community service. In my high school, completing 200 hours of community service before graduation was a requirement. I did 250, because I’d feel bad just ditching after I’d done only what I needed to do for myself. I suppose this isn’t the most complex or deep reason for me to be so invested, but I just can’t help it. I hear my friends from other colleges talk about having really serious problems with things like paying for tuition, student loans, crappy schedules, being lonely, things of that nature, and I just feel as though I am so blessed to be here. I don’t have any of those problems! I pay nothing and I have met a group of rad people that I can relate to and converse with whenever I want! Macbooks? Early registration for classes? What the hell did I do to deserve this? It’s all about humility and self-awareness. I mean, don’t get me wrong, when I’m in the lecture hall for business, spacing out at 9 in the morning on a Monday after a night of work, I’ll whine. I’ll complain. I’ll bitch about things like that. I slip up, I’m only human. The main thing, for me at least, is to never lose sight of the fact that every single thing has worked out okay up until this point and that you are here, you have potential to do great things, and it might not last forever. I won’t always be young, I won’t always be (relatively) healthy, I won’t always have the energy or the willpower or the motivation or even the sanity to get out of bed in the morning, so I’m gonna make this count.