Author: j.viache

To be a successful college student is to take advantage of every opportunity you have the chance to. My participation in the Community Service Project has encouraged me to draw upon the expertise of faculty and staff specifically with Tamara’s help with all of the Baruch Scholars in the process of our projects. I’ve learned the importance of asking question in order to assure I’m proceeding with my progress correctly. I look forward to the community service project as our organization, New York Cares, has so many options that we are bound to find volunteer opportunities that suit our interests and in turn make us grow as people while helping other simultaneously. Baruch has many clubs during club hours, but my biggest issue was finding a club to fit my interests. So far I have joined NYMIA (the New York Music Industry Association) and I have interviewed for TEAM Baruch. NYMIA has already improved my college experience, allowing me opportunities to network with other musicians, meet music professionals at panels, and indirectly allowed me to join Grammy U in which I attended a sound check for Troye Sivan for free. Three years from now, I see myself as a senior at Baruch preparing for my last semester of college. As my intended major is Management of Musical Enterprises, I see myself with an extensive knowledge of music compared to what I have currently. I will be continuing my music internship that was mandatory during my junior year and hopefully will have formed a band and/or joined a music group to play with on a regular basis. I see myself changing for the better as I see myself already beginning to do in the beginning of college, whether it be socially as becoming more friendly as I have or academically as I have started learning how to study properly, specifically for psychology. I look forward to seeing who I become in my years at Baruch.

Obviously as a student at Baruch, Honors or not, the main goal of most students is to graduate. But there’s much more to being a student at Baruch. You have to make a difference in some way, or really what is the point of being here. It’s not just to get a degree. Maybe when adults go back to school ten years after high school that is all they are trying to do, but going to college still as a teenager offers you a lot of opportunities. Next year when there are the next group of Baruch Scholars, I hope to have something to distinguish myself if they ask about my first year at Baruch. This means getting involved in clubs, this means exploring New York City and everything it has to offer, this means improving myself as a person and learning. After sharing my story of my first year, I want to not only distinguish myself in the minds of other people, but to be proud of my accomplishments and want to continue with them. I may not be sure of what these accomplishments are now, but solely going to class and doing nothing else at Baruch is not the way I will get to this point.

The Honors Program seems to promote giving back to the community in which you came from and/or are surrounded by on a daily basis, as emphasized by the community service hours required each semester.  I hope that wherever I choose to donate my time in the next four years I truly see the impact I make on the people or animals I help. I don’t want to spend time doing something I don’t actually have a deep interest in, and it’s not about making myself feel like a better person by volunteering, but it’s about becoming a better person from the experiences you encounter while volunteering.

It’s probably common to think back to your first days of high school during your first days of college. My first days of high school I was just beginning to make my first true friends that I ever had, but I never thought I would be someone to consistently be friends with someone, as I never had before. My first days of college I was missing those friends from ninth grade, and I realized I’m not who I once was. And that’s completely for the better.

I never expected to become the person I am today. My hopes and dreams back then were not clear. I did not have a path that drastically changed throughout high school, as many people tell in their life stories, but rather I instead gained a semi-clear path that has been consistent for the past few years. I can’t say music itself changed me completely, but the experiences I had in high school with music changed me.

I talk about music a lot, but when you really care about something that often is the case. Ninth grade my best friend asked me to join a band for a talent show. Our band, although with many changes in members and fights along the way, lasted until twelfth grade and by far Fridays when we practiced were my favorite days. Tenth grade i joined chorus as a result of a deal that my two best friends and I would all join together. I didn’t expect much, as many people just take chorus as an “easy” class, but my year of tenth grade chorus transformed me into someone who not only began to understand written music, but in the long run formed my passion for music. I also ended up joining the musical, Oliver, in tenth grade, since my girlfriend was doing it. It may seem like a stupid reason to join, but clearly it was worth my time as the two next years I performed in the musicals, My Fair Lady and Cinderella, as well. Eleventh grade I auditioned for my male acapella group, the Crooners, and to my surprise I made it. It wasn’t a lack of confidence that made me feel that I wouldn’t get in, but it was more so that my knowledge of music, especially sight singing, was not on par with most of the other people in the group. But my teacher had expectations that I would improve, and she was right. Twelfth grade was a continuation of some of the same experiences, but I remember a certain experience that changed my views on my future.

The summer before twelfth grade I went on college visits. My first college visit was to New York University, which at that time I really thought I would be attending. Although I did not end up going to NYU, that college visit was necessary. My tour guide was speaking about her major, Music Business, which I at that point did not know existed. When I thought of music majors I thought of performance, composition, education, all aspects of music I could not see myself finding success in. The pure act of my tour guide stating that this was her major made me instantly realize this is where I wanted to be headed. I believe I even wrote one of my Macaulay application essays on this experience.

My favorite song throughout twelfth grade, which turned into the year I came to many realizations and conclusions about my high school years, was and still is December by Neck Deep, which I ironically started listening to frequently in December. I sang this for a college audition, I sing it in my car, I even sang it while playing hallway soccer in my dorm last week. Everyone has something that makes them happy at any given time, a song, a show, sleep. For me it is listening to this song (even though it isn’t an upbeat or extremely happy song).

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