Month: September 2016

When I was younger, I would see college students in movies and think, “Wow they are pretty old, it is going to be forever until I become a college student.” Now here I am, one of those college students and I still can’t wrap my mind around that. My high school years seem to have flown by with the blink of an eye. I remember watching Ned’s Declassified School Survival Guide in middle school to prepare myself for what high school has to offer as if it was yesterday (it was nothing like the show sadly).

Many things have shaped who I am today. My family, friends, and jobs have all played a role in making me. I believe my family has taught me that I should get out there and do what feels like the impossible, meanwhile my friends have taught me that I should believe in myself. The jobs I’ve had, on the other hand, have shown me that through hard work, you can move up and get that promotion or get those around you to look up to you and go to you for advice.

As a college student, I have similar goals to my peers. I want to maintain a social life as well as a 4.0 GPA. I also want to figure out exactly what it is that I want to do in the future. Yes I have declared a major, but is it something I would love doing everyday? Is it what I thought it would be like, or is it something absolutely different? Will I wake up happy everyday and excited to go to work? These are all the things I hope to answer in my college years. I hope to make lots of connections and take up internships as a way of figuring myself out.

As for the first semester, I hope that I can maintain that beautiful 4.0 GPA (insert angels singing here) and make new connections. I also hope that I can achieve my small goal of moving out for college, even if it is just for the semester (fingers crossed). Besides all that, I just hope that I will be happy in this new environment. If I am happy then I think everything will fall into place just as it should.

To say that I simply wanted to repeat my first two years of high school is an understatement. It was in those two years, where I learned more of the path that I wanted to take in my future.

 

In my sophomore year of high school I had the opportunity to have leadership scheduled as a class. This class grew to be very important from the very start. It was this class that got me to become an active member in my school community, by helping, volunteering and attending at any event that I was needed at. It was also through those firsts days of leadership class that I grew my love for SING, which I did my last 3 years of high school, and was able to rediscover my passion for dance after a two year break.

My leadership class showed me all the joys and fun activities that my school had to offer outside the classroom. It made me realize I want to get involved and not just be that girl who practically speed walked everyday to the bus stop before other students got out of class. Being in leadership also showed me that in order to truly start to love where I am going to school. When you don’t attempt to be apart of your school community, you hate school even more you see school just as it is and miss out on many opportunities.

 

As a college student I would love to continue on the path of trying to find outside activities within the school to help make the school feel like a much better experience. That has always been my goal for a university to go and meet people who I would want to talk to after school ends and expand my horizon. My concerns, however, though I despite trying all these different activities and meeting people that I still won’t learn to love it here and that my feelings won’t change towards school.

My youth years consisted of going to school and playing soccer after. I would either play in my backyard with my dad or go to practice with my club team. It was pretty routine and I liked it. I lived out on Long Island in a town called Coram. I liked the friendly neighborhood and the diverse district. I started my high school career in Longwood and it was definitely different than Junior High. After a while though, I got used to it and I enjoyed it. I had my group of friends and I was playing soccer for the school. I was looking forward to sophomore year and playing on the varisty team. However, I never got to experience that. My parents pulled the rug out from under my feet before I even started doing my summer assignments for the fall.

That summer my parents bought a tiny house, which we ended up tearing down and rebuilding, in Smithtown, a town 30 minutes west of my old house. I told my parents that I refused to move but in the end I didn’t have much say in the decision. At first I didn’t accept the change and was miserable at my new school. However, slowly I saw that this move wasn’t so bad. I was offered one of the best soccer programs on the island as well as one of the best academic programs. I was becoming alot more social than in my old school and I was meeting a lot more people. I even met an amazing girl which I’m still with to this day.

Change can be hard at first but if you’re brave enough to accept it can often be good. You should always explore your options because there is a lot out there that you don’t know about. This is exactly what I expect to do at Baruch and in the city. I want to excel in my studies but at the same time I want to maintain a social life, explore the city and take advantage of all it has to offer as well as keeping up with soccer of course.

I remember so vividly my first day of kindergarten- posing for pictures, riding the school bus for the first time, and lining up with the other students in my class. Most of all, I remember feeling excited. Similarly, each day in which I travel to Baruch is a vivid, exhilarating experience for me; the sight of the awesome Manhattan skyline never fails to take my breath away.

I do not merely let observations and experiences reveal their meaning to me, but I also seek to search for their meaning myself. My inquisitive mind, my unfettered thoughts, my compassionate heart, and my ambitious soul define my character and have been inspired and strengthened by my family, as well as my home. My parents have taught me the power and hence importance of confidence in one’s self and unwavering perseverance. My younger brother has reinforced my work ethic with his own dedication to schoolwork, his passion for learning, and his focus and drive for achieving a goal. My safe, secure, and tranquil home with its beautiful yard of trees and flowers has allowed me to appreciate and love even the smallest, simplest things in life.

My parents have shaped my values for and practices of integrity and hard work, which in turn have shaped my attitude toward education. My drive to excel in school reflects how I strive to be the best I can be. My passion for learning not only satiates my desire for knowledge but also reflects my gratitude for having the privilege to acquire knowledge.

As a Baruch Scholar and as a college student in the greatest city in Earth, I am unbounded in both the domain of exploration and the range of experience. I inevitably await the myriad of opportunities and the unbridled potential for individual growth.

In my second year of highschool is when I really found out what I want my career to be. I got an opportunity to be part of a work experience program in a big Financial Firm called Mitsubishi Securities! It was here where I first learned about the stock market, mutual funds and bunches of other terms relating to the finance field.

Later on in highschool I took economics where I learned about those terms in more detail. I began to understand how they came together and, for example, how interest rates affects the money supply or why high inflation as well as deflation can both be perceived as negative aspects in our communities. I found myself even more interested in understanding these concepts and I wanted to go to a good bussiness college.

In my senior year I decided on going to Baruch and majoring in Finance. I still didn’t decide on a minor, but I am thinking about maybe minoring in economics because I enjoyed the course so much. I am hoping for a 4.0 GPA in Baruch and I’m working hard to get it!

In the future I would like to intern in firms like JPMorgan or Goldman Sachs. When I was little I dreamed of having my own office in one of those companies overlooking the city, although I know now that practically impossible I still would, nevertheless, love to work in those companies.  

About 4 years ago, if you had told me that I would be performing my heart out on stage all throughout high school and that I would actually enjoy it, I would have never believed you. But here I am, having performed in at least one musical production every year in high school, and still reminiscing about all the fun that I’ve had.

Participating in shows such as Festival of Nations and SING! not only helped me form strong bonds with a number of people but it also helped build me into the person that I am today. The ever so awkward freshman girl who could barely hold a conversation turned into the slightly less awkward senior girl who felt more comfortable in social settings. Maybe it was the endless laughs at practices or the nerve wracking anticipation right before it was time to perform but, either way, something kept bringing me back to that stage.

Looking back now, I’ve noticed that a majority of my most memorable experiences in high school are related somehow to these performances and I almost didn’t even do them freshman year. Thinking about this brings me back to the present because I am a freshman once again at Baruch and I feel maybe even more lost now than I did in the 9th grade. I don’t really know what the future holds, and that is both really exciting and really daunting at the same time. I’m not sure about a lot of things, but I am sure that if I want to make it in college just like I made it in high school, I have to try something new. I need to try out things that I never thought about doing before, because those experiences can end up being the most precious. Most importantly, I need to get out of my comfort zone, because I truly believe that only then would I be able to really enjoy my 4 years here at Baruch, however that may be.

“There are no constraints on the human mind, no walls around the human spirit, no barriers to our progress except those we ourselves erect”(Ronald Reagan).

There’s a moment in everyone’s life when you just can’t move, when the situation must play through and you must submiss to the outcome; a moment when just three seconds ago all was well, but now it was life or death.

We are heading home around 8 pm. On Atlantic Avenue, there’s a green arrow pointing, signaling it is safe to turn left. As any driver would do, my grandfather drives into the intersection and makes a crisp left turn. That’s when it goes down. A black Dodge Charger comes in speeding at us, and a single collision relays several reactions. I just sit there, with my heart beating too fast to count. I watch as my grandfather swerves the steering wheel in an effort to prevent another crash in the gas station we were pushed into. My mother grabs a hold of me and screams, “ARE YOU OKAY?”. My sister just sits there as well. We are all perfectly fine, but on the inside I am shook.

A couple of car rides later, the incident had become nothing but a memory; perhaps, another story to tell or to write about in a blog. Yet, the experience conveyed life’s importance to me. I came to value moments with my friends and family a lot more because of this experience; not just moments, but my education, my relationships, my interests, and my pursuits. I wanted to live life without restraints and I only realized that after that momentously crisp left turn.

Here at Baruch, I hope that I am able to tackle the constraints of the mind by pursuing mathematics and economics. I hope to break down the walls around human spirit by getting involved and meeting new people. I expect to step far enough outside the line (my comfort zone), to where the point of growth begins. Growth as an individual, a member of society, and as a Baruch Scholar.

 

Peruvian and Dominican. While both have many similarities they also have many differences in many aspects. The way people are raised; their values and overall culture is different.

My mom is Dominican and being born and raised in the Dominican Republic has shaped me. The education in the Dominican Republic is very low. To be more specific only 4% of the government’s money goes towards public education. This being the case and the fact that my family from my mom’s side is not very successful due to the lack of education impacted me. I felt pressure indirectly into becoming someone better, surpassing that and demonstrating that we could break that as a family.

In my dad’s side, the case was different. They had all been pretty successful and they had expectations to me, which brought pressure on me in a different way. I felt I had to do a good job and excel in school and become great in life to not let my Peruvian family. My Peruvian family had expectations of me, which surpassed that of my Dominican family, not only in an academic way but also in a cultural way.

Whenever I went to visit my grandma in Peru they had always complained how I had to be like my aunt who would iron her dad’s clothes by the age of nine and cook by the age of twelve. That seemed a little tough on me because that is not like the Dominican culture, at least those values, are not kept anymore. My Peruvian family knew this and because of it, they looked down on me and me becoming a failure because I would fail to meet all their expectation solely based on where my mom and I were from.

Both circumstances pushed me to become a better person and succeed, not only academically, but also as a person. I am proud to say that I was able to achieve that. I became the first person from my mom’s side to come to the States for college and although that was not something new for my Peruvian family, it still managed to meet their expectations academic wise. I also dedicated myself to becoming independent. I learned how to manage my time on my own and decide when I had to complete certain tasks or chores. Aside from that, I learned how to cook many Peruvian plates, do laundry, clean the house; all expectations my Peruvian family had for me.

I am thankful because due to this I have turned out to be dedicated and passionate about achieving my goals. I am consistently ambitious on how to achieve more instead of being okay with where I am.

As a college student, I hope to continue being the ambitious person that I have been, by trying to achieve all my goals and not let obstacles get in the way. Sometimes it is hard to stay dedicated and motivated about what we want to achieve, and that is certainly true for me, too. Regardless, I have hope and I know that I am capable of it as long as I keep in mind my priorities and what I want to achieve in life in the long run.

I still can’t believe I’m a college student. Just the other day, I was in the 3^rd grade looking up to the 5^th graders thinking “Man, will I actually make it there?” Now, I’m old and forming my future goals that are intended to make me happy, and honestly, I wouldn’t have known how to do this if it wasn’t for the 4 years in high school.

I started Brooklyn Technical High school as a shy and awkward person (I’m still awkward; that hasn’t changed,) but with that, I was also a very insecure and too kind of a person. Since I went to a TINY catholic middle school, I didn’t know what to expect as I got dunked into one of the biggest high schools in America. The diversity there was the first thing I noticed and the diversity is what changed me.

As I went through sophomore year, a lot of conflicting situations happened to me that made me realize what I was weak in. I no longer became a push over, I became blunt, but I still had the soft heart that I try to maintain. Junior and senior year came and that was an esteem booster. I started taking care of myself, lost weight and, simply put, became a lot happier with life. Of course, the work load was ALOT, but I managed.

Now going into college with this open out look of life, I expected to meet new people from around the world, with different viewpoints in hopes of learning even more. Hopefully it’ll be fun when I get more involved.

As of right now, I just hope I can manage things. I want to be social but I also want that 4.0. So let’s see if I can attempt to balance that. I also hope to find a place where I truly belong. Besides that, I can’t think of much when put on the spot. Ask me back in a few and watch me rant about 1000 different things I want to do.

Hello World!

My name is Tam Phuong, destined for greatness and success. At least that is what my family always tells me as the only form of encouragement I know. Coming from the humble beginning of the dirty Saigon streets in Vietnam, I am blessed to currently live and attend school in New York City right now.

I was born into a traditional Vietnamese family, raised by what everyone would call “asian stereotypes”. In this family, there is an arsenal of unlimited weapons utilized to beat my ass whenever I slack off my path to success: Haven’t done homework? A whip to the butt. Sneaked out to play? a belt to the butt? Too much time on TV? A sandal across your butt cheeks. At that time, I resented it because no kids would want a bright red butt cheeks every time they see themselves in the mirror. Thanks to my parents’ strictness, however, I learnt humility and discipline. These two factors have helped me a lot in life and are crucial on my path to success.

My family was by no means rich but we were quite well-off. My parents make enough that they can afford to expose me to different elements of life. I travelled a lot as a kid and was exposed to many different cultures. I was fed many types of exotic food and cuisines. My parents encouraged me to play sports and do extracurricular activities. Thanks to their encouragement and the opportunities they provided, I can be proud in my preference to be multicultural.

My family has done a lot for me. They have provided me with many opportunities which has shaped who I am today. I intend to study hard, have a blossoming career and provide back for them. I also plan to mature as a person, developing my personality, couture, ethics and manners. I want to make my family proud of who I am.