Monthly Archives: October 2010

I guess I’m just lazy and rather have fun then to do work. I’m an hedonistic person. I want instant gratification in whatever I do and I just haven’t made that leap to thinking about the future. Well I mean sure I think about it like what I’m am going to do for the rest of my life and how I will achieve it. I think everyone thinks about these things every now and then but I just haven’t connected the dots.

I get my stimulus from playing handball when it isn’t too cold or I go play pool with my best friend. Those give me my instant gratification. The feeling of doing that awesome kill in handball  or making a hard cut shot into a pocket in pool. Those things give me motivation because I get that boost of adrenaline.  Now that its getting colder I’m going back to video games. I’ve been an avid gamer for years and I’m good at what I do which is first person shooter. I have many friends that are good and fun to be with in a game and its just hard to say no to them when they ask me to join their game. It feels good to be good at something and to be with friends.

Believe it or not I also enjoy learning. I’m loving my anthropology and math classes. But the way I learn also feeds my bad habits. People learn differently and I learn by listening and watching what the teacher does and says. I rarely if ever copy notes and if I do Ill probably get only a little more then half of what I would get from just sitting there quietly and paying attention. Because of that, writing suffered dramatically. I never wrote anything and my grammar was always horrendous. Learning the rules of how to write properly just confused me even more so I never bothered. But homework was never really like “watch this youtube video and we will discuss it in class”. I’d do that H.W. every day and learn something from it if it was but sadly it never happened that way.

I realized I should conform to how things work in an institute like Baruch but I never felt the need to in High school so I never did. Paying attention in class and getting high grades in test meant little to no work at home which gave me the freedom to do whatever. Having that much freedom is intoxicating to say the least. It’s hard to let go a way of life you lived for most of your life.

Sometimes things just happen to slowly. Handball when you play a good game, the ball moves fast and my reaction time gets better and faster. Picking up a fast kill meant reacting to it before it hits the wall and getting into position. The pace of the game makes me love it. This carries over to games. There is games like RPG (Role Playing Games) that just bore the hell out of me. Everything is slow and the build up is slow. Shooting games gives me fast pace feeling when my reaction to seeing the enemy is everything. In school, everything is slow. So far I had one exam in math class. I haven’t paid attention nor did any H.W. for it for a good couple of weeks so obviously I’m behind. But all I did was skim through the notes for a good hour and paid attention the class before the exam to catch up and I got an 80 on the test. I came from a school where 80 was good enough and the way I see it, I probably didn’t need to skim through my notes for that hour if I paid attention in every class but one class was 100 minutes. Things just don’t move fast enough for me to care. Not saying I’m a prodigy and I will get things instantly and of course this pace is still faster then the pace in my high school.

More or less to rap it up, I’m a hedonist. I need my instant gratification so I have the motivation to continue. If I don’t get it, I lose motivation and quit before I even start. I’d think about doing something and calculate when I will receive my reward. I realize the reward is bigger and much more valuable then having an adrenaline rush in sports or games but right now, I just don’t feel it.

There has been plenty factors holding me back. I try to minimize the amount of work I do and maximize my grades. This means cutting down on studying and doing the least work as possible. This is how my mind set is and thats how I personally work. I never really believed doing well in school or getting good grades would lead to a successful life in the future. This in turn leads to my lack of motivation in college.

     I think one of the main hindrances that is stopping me from doing well in school is time. I dont want to dedicate time on things that really dont have any meaning to me, especially homework or studying. Time is such an important factor because balancing out social activities and work is really a struggle for me. During my senior year of high school, I had such a short schedule and almost no work. Everything was just so simple and calm. Now that I’m in college, everything has just reversed. The work never seems to end and the stress never stops. Adjusting to this drastic change of environments has proven to be difficult and is hindering me from working my best. Time management is definitely something I must improve on in order for me to assimilate in to the college life.

     Less sleep is also a great hinderance to me. Sleep is something that you cant make up. It is really just essential to for a college student since it is hard to work productively without it. I almost always sleep late because of a variety of things such as facebook, aim, or just working really late. This has definitely affected my performance in school because some of my professors are extremely boring. Their boring lectures combined with my drowsiness results to sleeping in class. I simply cant stay awake things are just so incredibly boring or unrelated to real life. Even though I dont pay attention in class much, I still do fairly well in exams or graded papers. Unfortunately my lack of sleep and attention span has probably hindered me from doing my best.

     Every morning I wake up tired and sometimes I leave for school late. This is a bad habit since when I’m late for some of my classes, I usually dont understand what is going when I get there. For example calculus is difficult but gets even more difficult when I walk in late since I have no idea what happened before. My communications class doesnt mark people present if a person is late more than fifteen minutes so it becomes problematic if I come in late to that class. My occasional lateness is probably affecting my grades slightly and if I could wake up earlier, lateness wouldnt be much of a problem. Waking up early and delays in the train have been holding me back.

    Procrastinating is a serious problem for me. Because of it, I usually end up doing my assignments right before its due. For example, I probably should of done this extra credit assignment a few days ago but now I’m doing it the day before its due. Laziness also shares the blame for doing my assignments so late. I just simply dont want to do any of my assignments because I lack the motivation to do so. My laziness usually causes me to the the least amount of work to get a decent grade. I never want to go that “extra mile” because of it. Going that “extra mile” may earn me a higher grade but I dont care for it. I simply want to pass and move on. this kind of mindset has hindered me from exceeding in my college work and settling for a more mediocre grade.

     All of these characteristics have definitely stopped me from doing my best in college.  Time management, lack of sleep, lateness, motivation, laziness are all problems I must endure for now. Once I find a solution to these obstacles, I will definitely become a more higher performing student. All of these hindrances are just part of adjusting to college life and I’m sure I will be able to deal with them in time.

Ever since I started college I have been doing okay in all of my classes. however I haven’t felt that I have been doing my best. Here are a few things that I think have been hindering me.

One big thing that I think has been hindering me from doing my best in college is all of the work I’ve had. Ever since I started college I have been trying to manage, although I do still have some trouble. Back when I was in high school the workload was much lighter. My entire senior year of high school I only had to write an essay every two months. Now in college it seems that I have to write one every week or two. This combined with all of the homework and the midterms I have been taking lately makes for nonstop work. It has been very hard trying to balance all of this work. even though I end up finishing all of the work, I feel like since I only have so much time to do it all I’m not able to do as good a job as I used to. I’m sure that as time goes by I will get used to the increased work load of college. However until that happens I think that the heavy work load is going to continue to impede me from doing my best in college.

Another issue that has been hindering me in college is the fact that I have always been kind of lazy. Even when I was in grade school my teachers would always tell my mo at parent teacher conference that while I was pretty smart I never “applied myself” which is pretty much code for lazy. I’ve never used to work any harder than I absolutely had. Good enough was always good enough for me. Even though I did not work exceptionally hard I would still get good grades. All throughout grade school and even into high school I would always get between a eighty and a ninety in all of my classes. College however has been a totally different experience for me. I have found myself having to study more just to get into the lower eighties. Part of this problem is that I only end up studying the night before because I am a chronic procrastinator. I have almost always put everything off until the last possible second. If I get a report due the fifth I wont usually start it until the third or fourth. This has always been one of the biggest if not the biggest things that hinder me in school. I have been trying to change this recently. I am actually writing this a week before it is due.

My difficulty with focusing is the last main thing that has been hindering me in college. One of the main reasons I was able to do well when I was in high school is that I already knew most of the material. It was easy for me to focus mainly because I already knew what I was being taught. In college however almost everything I am learning in my classes is new to me. With all of this new information coming at me all of the time it is hard for me to focus on the subject I have to. Another reason I was able to focus better in high school is that my high school schedule was much easier than my college schedule is. My last year of high school I would wake up at seven and by noon I was out of school. Nowadays I have to get up at six and I usually don’t get out of class until a quarter to four. The length of the college classes also took a toll on my ability to pay attention. Trying to pay attention to a professor talking for an hour and forty five minutes is a lot harder than it seems. I have been noticing however that in the last month or so staying focused in class has started to get a little easier.

Since I started college laziness, a heavier work load, and an inability to focus have been hindering me from doing my best. Some of these problems I have dealt with my entire life, while others only started affecting me after I started college. Over the last few weeks I have been trying to fix these problems and work harder. While I haven’t completely gotten rid of what impeding me I have started to focus more and get rid of my work load sooner.

     College itself is a big leap and difference from highschool. In highschool I was able to go to class and just do my work. Never did I ever have to actually go home and study. I always managed to get 85+ on every and anything that I did. Stress wasnt a word in my vocabulary. Now that really has changed. I thought that I could do the same in college. The worth ethic is so much more challenging and there seems to never be enough time to have a social life. I’m a person who is extremely lazy. I either have to sleep at least 8-10 hours or else I wouldnt want to do anything productive the next day.

     When you think of college besides all the stress that you hear comes with it, you hear that you will have a lot of fun. I do have some fun times but those experiences were not really the definition of fun for me. I like to hang out with my friends at night, go to parties, and because of this I usually come home really late. This is a problem because the next day I have to wake up at seven just to go to school. In highschool my first class started at 10:30 and my last class ended at 1:30. Along with that, I was only about ten minutes away from my highschool. This is a big difference to what I have to go through now. I guess I can’t complain though, it’s just something that I have to adjust to.

     Another thing that is hindering me is the fact that I can’t follow what is going on in class at times. This is a big struggle for me. For as long as I can remember, I always knew the lessons that were going on during class. Never did I ever have to stress about not knowing what was going on in class. Now this is a major set-back for me. It doesn’t make me want to go to the SACC or go to tutoring of any sort. It honestly just makes me want to give up. If I knew what was going on, I’d be motivated to do more work and want to help others. Because I don’t know what is going on I just feel lost. This is not a comfort zone for me. I feel like now that I try to make a come around and try to do my best, my best isn’t good enough. What is there left for me to do? I guess I have to change my study habits and notice what my priorites are. I have to put school before anything because I know that this is my future ahead of me. I’m going to be living my own life. I can’t depend on friends or hanging out to help me out. Cramming the material the night before won’t help me either. At times I think I will feel like college has taken over my life. I don’t want to be stressed out all of the time. I want to be able to have free-time and some time for myself. I guess that comes with time. For now I have to get the hang of things and when I feel comfortable with the way that these things are going maybe I can have some time for myself.

     Last, the thing i feel that is hindering me the most is that I feel like I haven’t gotten a break from school at all. It is true that during my senior year of highschool I did only have a few hours of school. But I had a lot of challenging classes that assigned a lot of projects and written assignments. It took alot of my time to get it done. If I was to go home at 1:30 I would still end up doing my work and finishing around 3:30 which is the same time that normal school comes out. The night before the placement test at Baruch, I admit that I did go out with my friends. We ended up partying real late and the next day I woke up with a hangover. I ended up bombing the placement test and a few weeks later, I got a letter in the mail saying that I should take a summer course. I was so pissed. Not only did I have to go to school in the summer, but it started at 9 in the morning. I had to sacrafice alot. During the summer my family likes to take exotic vacations and this summer when we were supposed to go to hawaii again, I had to stay home because I had school. Now that I think back, I’m not going to complain anymore because that’s life. God works in mysterious ways, and hopefully He has great things in store for me.

Coming to Baruch I thought that I would never change. I am afraid of change, yet I am scared of permanency. Why am I always contradicting myself. I am afraid that I might lose my morals if I change.. I am afraid that I will never grow if I stay who I am. My fear are both things. My fear is waking up in the morning and allowing myself to breathe. My fear is going to bed at night and waking up in the same position. My fear is fear itself. Why can’t I do things based on my impulses? Why can’t I live my life as a butterfly?

I am clumsy. I can fall if you tell me to stand in one position. I walk a crooked line. One day when I was young, my friend and I decided to take up roller skating. There is an elementary school near her house that lays on top of a hill. So going to the park, we had to skate down that hill. Unfortunately, no one informed me of how to brake on the roller-skates so I crashed head first to a telephone pole! Even worse, after that my body fell straight down on the cement floor (on my back side)..OUCH! I believe that I was unconscious and embarrassed for about 2 seconds because the next thing I heard was my friend calling my name and asking if I was okay.

I feel empowered when my mother smiles at me before she leaves for work. I feel empowered when I can make someone else smile. I feel empowered when my best friend lends her ears to me when I feel like everything is life is going wrong. I feel empowered by looking at my baby niece and thinking the world of her. I feel empowered a few moments every single day. But those empowerment made me who I have become.

I want to grow as a person. I want to be able to fulfill my own selfish dreams. I desire change. I adore stillness. I know who I am. But I need a few adjustments.

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I follow a different motto every single day. Today I became attached to this quote:

“Laugh as much as you breathe and love as long as you live.”

My name is Jennifer Peng, today I will be posting up a monologue about myself. I was born in Manhattan, raised in Brooklyn, and then transferred to Queens. Queens introduced me to diversity; it is also the most diverse place in America. I moved to queens for 8^th grade and it was horrible. I hated it at first and nobody really liked me. Thank god, that the following year was a fresh beginning, I was a freshman at Forest Hills High School. I will be discussing my fears, accomplishments, empowerment, embarrassing moment, and some things about my new experience at Baruch College.

The roles I play are a daughter, girlfriend, and friend. I never really had a true best friend because I believe every one of my friends is equally loved. The closest person that I consider as a best friend is my boyfriend, Ivan Martinez. I love my family because I know that no matter what they’ll always be behind me, supporting me all the w ay as they have been doing.

One of my biggest fears is change. Although I have learned over the years that change results into something great, it’s hard for me to get use to things. I am a person of habit and I like keeping it that way. Of course, along the way I’d like to wash out my bad habits as well as improve on my good ones. There’s always room for improvement, which is one of my mottos.

My accomplishments as well as a time a felt empowered is moments where I produce the exact image in my head to paper. By this I mean my artwork, I take great pride and joy into my art and wish to pursue in a career that revolves around business and art. I hope that one day; my legacy will be shown through my art as well as my generations to come.

My most embarrassing moment does not exist because almost weekly, I have an embarrassing moment. I get embarrassed easily because of little things.

What I like best about Baruch is its open environment. Everyone is very friendly here including all the professors and my classmates. Although it is different from my easy going high school years, Baruch encourages me to do well and try harder. I ran into some troubles in my calculus class but the solution was not hard to find. I instantly found a study buddy and she has helped me a lot. It’s been a month since college has started, and I can’t wait to see what awaits me.

Good morning everyone, I’m Rajdeep Chahal, if you didn’t know. I was born in Richmond Hill, Queens, and I went to Queens High School for the Sciences in Jamaica, Queens.

I’ve really been enjoying the experience in college. The biggest change for me between college and high school is how big the college is compared to high school. My high school had only 400 kids, 100 in each grade.It was all of one floor in a two story building on the York College campus, and we had to use the college Performing Arts center for events and the college gym for gym classes. Going from a school with 400 students to one with 13,000 students was a big transition.

Another transition to make was the one from a high school course load to a college one. In high school I was told that we would only have about 4 or 5 classes compared to 7 or 8 in high school, but it turns out there’s a lot of work in each class. I do feel a little more prepared for college by going to a high school in which every class was honors level, but I’ve got a lot of work to do here in college since I didn’t do too well in high school.

I love meeting new people, and I’ve had a lot of opportunities to make friends here at college. I love being around people and just hanging out, especially with the new friends I’ve made, but also with the old ones, including the 14 others that came to Baruch from my high school. I play basketball with friends in the gym often, go to Chinatown to eat during club hours, and I’m looking into clubs to join to meet even more people. So I hope to get to know all of you soon.

Hello my name is Daniel Aharoni and I’m from Forest Hills a neighborhood in Queens. I’ve lived in this neighborhood for almost my entire life. I attended Forest Hills High School for 4 years. My high school was considered very large containing 4,000 students, but it is nothing compared to Baruch having more than 4 times the umber of students.  College has been very different for me from high school for reasons that i could go on about for a while, mainly the travel. It used to take me 5-10 minutes to walk to my school and then that would be all, now i have to take the train from anywhere from 30 minutes to an hour depending on the traffic. The work at college is also different from my 4 years at high school. Most of my work is due online and while it does make things a bit easier, it is easier to slack off and forget about work in my opinion.

The literal fears i have are fairly common and include heights and flying like many other people. One of my fears is the fear of failure, and a fear of letting myself and the most important people to me down. The most important people to me are my family, which include my sister and parents. My parents want me to succeed very much and I do not want to let them , or myself down.

My hobbies are very normal for a person of my age. I love almost all sports (with the exception of baseball) very much to both watch and play. My favorite sport however is basketball. My friends and I all love and play basketball all the time. A lot of my friends have gone away to school and its tough for me because these are very important people to me but i am able to see them once in a while. Most of them love the dorming lifestyle, and i sometimes regret not going away for school. staying home does have its advantages though just like going away.

My main challenges in school are the actual classes. The content of thee courses are more difficult than in high school and actually require me to study. Having pretty much no trouble in high school, i haven’t studied in 4 years and am already a big procrastinator. My challenge is to not let my old habits get the best of me and stop me from becoming a successful college student.

Hey! My name is Koonladit Lim but everyone calls me Erik. It’s way easier to say my middle name than trying to spend an extra minute trying to pronounce my first one. Well anyway, I’m from Flushing,Queens and I think everyone in this room would agree that public speaking isn’t our best thing. Nevertheless, I stand here before you  telling you my story only on 5 hours of sleep.

There are many things that I consider important in my life. My family, friends, and becoming successful. Without any of these things I think I would live the rest of my life as an empty husk. Having goals also go with what I find most important. I find that having no goals gives you no purpose in this world.

My fears? Well I can tell you what I’m not afraid of. For one thing I’m not scared of pigeons. I went to Madison Park the other day and saw a girl get startled by one tiny pigeon. It amused me for a good couple of minutes. Seriously though, I’m afraid of failure. I come from a academically competitive family. The last thing I want to do is disappoint my parents after all the support they have given me.

I love video games. I’m a geek at heart and know about all the latest gadgets and games that are on the market. I could talk all day about how big of a geek I am. I also like going to the gym. With all this new workload however I haven’t had much time to go.

A moment I felt empowered was when I was in a soccer tournament during 6th grade. Scoring the winning goal gave me a sense of accomplishment and joy. Oh and that pizza we had after the match never tasted so good. It tasted like delicious victory.

So that’s pretty much it about me. Has it been 5 minutes yet? Should I tell about how college is going? It’s been going alright so far. All these barrage of quizzes are fun. No I lied.  One of the few things I enjoy so far is all the free time I get. It’s so tempting to procrastinate but I can’t mess up this semester. That’s pretty much my story. I’m looking forward to getting to know you guys this semester!

Too much to handle sometimes