EG 4B

Home at Last!

So for the next five minutes I’m supposed to give you guys a detailed account of who I am and what my thoughts are. In case you were wondering or not my name is Elizabeth although for the past four years I’ve been known as Eliza.

It wasn’t until this morning that I felt slightly more comfortable with this whole monologue thing. Honestly, how am I supposed to describe myself in five minutes or better yet how am I supposed to stay FOCUSED for five minutes? In my head this whole thing seemed conceited as well as scary, its sort of like letting someone you just met read your diary…if you have one.

So I guess I’ll start now by telling you that I’m a pessimist with mild obsessions, or so I was told by my friend’s hippie ex-boyfriend. To this day that description confuses me but I guess it’s the closest I’ll get to summarizing my personality. I can tell you my likes and dislikes although I’m not so sure that those things make me who I am. I guess its as close as I’ll get to figuring out my thoughts.

Since the age of 8 I’ve been an avid coffee drinker, I love my Blackberry and I used to love tap dancing (I did it for 10 years), and I really love baking not for myself but for others, when I was little I wanted to be a professional catering tap dancer, that obviously isn’t working out for me. My absolute favorite holiday is Christmas and I love it when it snows. I could easily stand here and list off all of the things I like but rest assured that if Facebook has a “like” button for it I’ve probably already clicked it. I have a couple of dislikes but I’d rather not get into them that might be where the pessimist in me emerges.

In my head college was going to guide me on a path to self-discovery. That’s what I thought exactly a year ago as I stood on the corner of 68^th and Park wearing a plaid kilt and a blazer, which can only be described as butch.  I was on my way to school, as a high school senior knowing that I had somehow made to the end. I don’t know if those memories serve a purpose but truthfully I can say that my idea of college was very off. So far I’ve pulled a couple of all nighters and I’ve been reading… a lot. I managed to think that I had everything under control up until two weeks ago when the work started to pile up. I was under the impression that somewhere along the line in the halls of Baruch I was going to have “ahah” moment. Maybe I romanticized it but still…

I guess I can’t say that yet because it’s only been a little over a month. I just expected that I would miraculously come to an understanding of who was supposed to be because quite frankly I have no clue who I am right now it just feels like an in between stage kind of like purgatory only less dead and more unknown. It sounds really strange and almost like a cliché but so what?! Maybe I’m already the person I’m going to be for the rest of my life, maybe I do have things figured out. So what if I am only a compilation of likes and dislikes, memories and thoughts what’s so bad about that? I guess I can’t make decisions until more time passes but for now I’m content knowing that I made it to college and that its not so lonely. The scary part is what lies ahead of me and how that will potentially change me, because that’s the unknown.

I definitely strayed from my original monologue:

To be honest, I held off writing this little speech for the longest time. I wasn’t sure of how to explain to everyone who I am when, in reality, I still haven’t figured that out for myself yet. We had a bunch of prompts for our free writes for these past few weeks. With each and every one of those, I had trouble coming up with a definitive answer for.

For starters, I can provide you with my basic information. My name’s Julia Leung. I’m eighteen years old. I live in Queens, New York, and I have for all my life. I have two younger brothers who enjoy picking on me. But even though I told you all those facts, there wasn’t anything substantial to them.

One thing that I can say about college so far is that it’s definitely not too different from my high school. The student body is large, so I feel at home in the midst of all these people, even though it’s harder to make friends. I wasn’t too happy about going to Baruch and I’m still not. It’s a great school but I have no interest in business. The only reason I feel obliged to be here is because of my parents. I understand that they want me to have a financially stable life, but I don’t believe that the only way to make money is to enter the business field. In retrospect, though, I honestly have no idea what I want to study; I’m incredibly indecisive.

I’m an avid food enthusiast and I pretty much eat anything. I have a short attention span. I’m addicted to the internet. I’m really bad at math, which is one of the reasons I shouldn’t be here. I’m incredibly afraid of pigeons and squirrels. But mostly pigeons. I start panicking when they get too close to me. Unfortunately, this proves to be an obstacle, especially since Baruch is surrounded by them. I’m still afraid of the dark.

I reflect back on these ‘likes and dislikes’, I feel that they’re the only things that are constant in my life right now. I know I said that Baruch isn’t too different from my high school, but there are some major differences. I was incredibly involved back in high school, being on the track team and the yearbook committee. And I realized in June, after the yearbooks were distributed and I had to announce the new captain that would take my place on the track team, things were changing. I understand that change is inevitable, but I was not prepared for how quickly one academic year had passed by. And I certainly wasn’t prepared for all of my friends packing up their belongings and going away for college.

But change is good. Change is something that’s going to happen whether you like it or not, and the only thing left to do is to go with the flow. Life is way too short for you to worry about every little thing. I believe that everything happens for a reason, and it’ll lead you to greater things in the long run. And, hopefully, as I begin my journey here at Baruch, I’ll be able to find some of the answers to these questions in the long run.

And I chose this photo, and doodled all over it, to represent me because I feel like I’m always going to be a kid at heart with an overactive imagination no matter how old I am. It’s bright and colorful and sort of obnoxious – everything that I believe myself to be.

     Hi, my name is William Wong. I was born in New York and grew up on Staten Island. I moved to Queens in my junior year of high school. I’m not afraid of much. However, I am scared of dark places because it gets me depressed and scared. Light places make me happy and seeing cute dogs make me happy.                                       

     A few important things in my life are my family, friends and money. My family is important to me because without them, I wouldn’t be who I am today. I love my parents most of the time. I have one older brother whom graduated baruch. I am now following his footsteps. My friends are just as important to me because without them, life would be really boring.

     One time I felt really guilty was when my parents found out I was cutting school. It was pretty scary because I did’nt know what they were going to do to me. But fortunately they didnt go crazy and were just really disappointed in me. A moment I felt empowered was when I was a little kid playing with legoes. I felt like god of the lego world. My theme song is Billionaire by Travie McCoy.

    I love to do a variety of things. I like to play poker at the moment. I identify myself with the asian culture. I have many roles I play in life. I play the roles of a son and a freshmen college student. I also play the role of a disappointed job hunter. Also I play the role of a resident of New York City.

    College is going pretty well. My biggest challenge is math at the moment. I know calculus is hard but I’m going to study hard to make sure I pass the class. I just had my first test and I did pretty well. The thing I enjoy most about college is the fact that its in the city. Theres just so many choices to eat. In High school, I didnt have so many options. Now that I’m in Baruch theres restuarants everywhere. I’ve met a lot of new friends so far and hopefully everything continues to go smoothly.

I love toys and sometimes I pretend I'm a ninja.

Hello everyone my name is Daniel Kai Shum. I am from Flushing, Queens and soon moved to Great Neck to only move back to Flushing. I identify myself as a twenty something year old trapped in a ten year old boys body. As you can see I look like a kid but I am very self reliant doing almost everything by myself. My interests include candy I love all candy especially gummy bears but I would only eat the green and white ones. Legos is on of my favorite past times and till this day I continue to play. However even though I am still like a kid in some ways, I am a very self reliant hard working student. I currently live by myself paying the bills and holding three jobs while attending college.

College so far does not provide any difficulties. It seems quite easy to me making it feel like high school. The days are long especially with the huge breaks. To me college is just like another high school. However during high school my classes usually ran from ten to twelve challenging me to manage my time wisely. Most of the time it is procrastination that hinders me and whenever I am on the computer I am always going “damn facebook got me again”.

My greatest fears include heights and scary movies. For one why would I want to go on a roller coaster or six flags for a great deal of money in order to be frightened. I find no enjoyment in that and it only makes me feel uncomfortable. In addition who likes crazy movies. Is it worth it to get scared for ten bucks? I can go scream at you or hide in the closet and scary you for ten bucks. I really don’t mind taking that money off your hand.

The roles I play in my life is basically an independent student working hard to make it big. College is just another obstacle to get over. Again I am a twenty something year old stuck in an ten year olds body.

The following might differ (slightly) from my performance in class…

Greetings ladies and gentlemen, my name is Adam and I will waste the next 5 minutes of your lives.

I am absolutely terrified of making public speeches. I just find it really hard to stand in middle of a room with everyone’s eyes on me. I get really tense and my legs start shaking. I’m sorry I need to sit down.

Yes, this is better. What can I say about myself? Similar to everyone else here, I am a freshman, I’m from queens. I went to Grover Cleveland High school, in which similar to Bill’s high school barely passing is an achievement. I took 4 years of honors math, honors math A, honors math B, AP Calculus and AP Statistics, passed each.

I love keeping fish, it started with me stealing my mom’s betta fish. I got the little guy a 10 gallon tank and he’s been living happily ever since, he even swims up to me every time I’m next to his tank.

I am absolutely terrified of wasps. A couple years back my parents took me to Pennsylvania for vacation, I was so terrified I walked around with a can of bug spray. I also I think I beat the world record in a 200 meter run because I used a different spray (one for roaches and ants) and apparently it does not kill wasps. So I just pissed them off and ran like hell.

I can’t get myself to do my work. When I try to I immediately get tired. I procrastinate a lot. Before I even get to my work I need to take a shower, I just have to. If for whatever reason I just stop doing the work I’m fine and awake, the second I get to it. I’m tired and sleepy.

Okay, was that 5 minutes?

Yeah, I don’t got anything else. Thank you everyone for your time.

I chose the chameleon, because I tend to blend into my surroundings. I prefer sitting back and spectating, rather than actively taking part.

I’m Alex, I was born and raised in Queens. I went to bayside high school in bayside Queens and now I go to Baruch college. On the surface I may seem like your average tall, skinny teenager. However once you find out more about me like what I like, dislike, what roles I play, etc you start to find out how unique I really am. I’m a son, a brother, a student, and for the last three years I’ve been a godfather. one of the things that I’m really into is sports. I have been a Mets fan all my life and a Jets fan since I was ten. I actually spent most of last summer at citi field watching the Mets lose. Another thing that I like a lot is cars especially classic cars. I really like old mustangs and corvettes, come to think of it I actually like most classic muscle cars. Besides that I’m into video games and I’m starting to get into tech. there are only a couple of things that I don’t like. One thing I don’t like is cold weather. As soon as it dips below sixty degrees it starts to bug me. Another thing I don’t like is long commutes. Living in Queens and going to school in the city means my commute is between an hour and an hour and a half and I cant stand it. I also don’t like insects especially spiders. Ever since I was a kid I’ve never liked bugs and spiders have always creeped me out. The people who are most important to me are definitely my family. Over the years whenever I’ve needed help my family has been there. My College career has been going pretty well. The only thing I’m having a little trouble with is writing essays. I’ve never really liked writing and now I have to write an essay every few weeks. I’m sure that in a few weeks I’ll get used to it. Besides that college hasn’t been as hard as I thought it would be. I’ve been doing pretty well even with all the added responsibility and all my professors are pretty cool.

l.

My Name is Thomas Brock and I’m 18 years old. I have lived in Ridgewood, New York all my life. I went to High School at Brooklyn Tech. I am pretty shy and won’t really talk unless someone else talks to me first. I am slowly getting used to college life at Baruch. I’m getting used to the subtle differences from high school, like the higher work load and lower number of classes. I enjoy the long breaks between classes because it gives me time to do other things and it is nice to take a break from work. I am adjusting to life at Baruch nicely and have joined the archery club. I’m hoping to meet new people, learn new things and improve my communication and public speaking skills. I am also hoping to figure out what I would want to major in. Baruch will hopefully force me to break my habit of procrastinating, which I have had as long as I can remember. The moment when I felt the most embarrassed was when I used to play baseball. I only played because I thought my father wanted me to, but I was terrible only getting maybe 2 hits that weren’t fouls in over 3 years of playing. A moment when I felt empowered was when I used to tutor in math. It felt great to feel like you were helping someone. The student who I tutored had their math scores improve a lot. I had to stop this though, because in High School my math grades started to drop. The thing I like the most is to hang out with my friends. The thing that I hate the most is Public Speaking. I can’t deal with it and every solution I can come up with just causes more problems. I just have a hard time getting used to talking to a room full of strangers. I also dislike creative writing because it is hard to get a good idea. Free writing is also bad for me because it feels unnatural for me to just come up with ideas without thinking about them first. My fears are failure, because I don’t want to disappoint myself or my family and friends, and heights. The second fear isn’t the fear of being high up, but falling from high up. The roles that I play in my life are son, brother, friend, and student. My family and friends are the most important thing to me because they help me and guide me. I don’t really have a motto or anything like that.

Self-Portrait

I’m pretty shy and keep to myself for the most part. I have a hard time getting to know new people and I think sometimes I am aversive towards talking to them. I like to take things slowly and don’t like being rushed. Also, back when I used to play sports I was mediocre on offense but great on defense. I was even my team’s goalkeeper in soccer. So since we see each other everyday, I’ll post an image representative of myself instead of my own picture. So I chose this image of a turtle. Which has a shell which it can use to hide from things and for protection and defense from other things. It also moves slowly. So the picture is based off of the qualities I see myself having.

Monologue

Hi everyone, my name is Faizan Sohail. I am a freshman here at Baruch College. I don’t know what I am going to major in yet but I’ll figure it out eventually. The thing I treasure the most in life is my family. I love them all and I would not be the person I am if it were not for them. I identify myself by my family and the traditions I carry from Pakistan. The roles I take in my life include son, uncle, brother and student. My father is the most important person to me in my life. He has sacrificed a lot and done so much just so that I could make it to college and live the comfortable lifestyle that I do.

What I fear is losing friends. Back in my old high school I had made a lot of friendships with many decent people. Friendships take a long time to build and saying good-bye was one of the most painful things I had to do in my life. A lot of my friends went abroad to study and I will miss them deeply. We shared many good times. Spending time with my high school gang was what made me happy.

School is going fine. The biggest transition is time management. Managing a job and school is hard. I have a job to help me pay for tuition and books so it’s not just something I can drop at a moment’s notice. I tend to procrastinate a lot which isn’t good. Many of my professor’s give a lot of assignments and keeping track of each one is a biggest challenge. The thing I like most about Baruch is the freedom. There are lots of good restaurants and shops to browse on my spare time. Baruch is in the heart of Manhattan so there really is no end to the amount of places to visit.

I feel guilty whenever I see food wasted because I know a lot of people who don’t have enough food to feed themselves or their children. My motto is “work hard and you will succeed because nothing worth getting is easy to obtain”. I live by this because I can’t expect to do my parents proud by just being a bum. I have to work hard and only then can I hope to succeed and make them proud.

This is me at my brother's wedding. I see myself as someone who is loyal to his family and his parents over anything else in life. I am proud to be from Pakistan and to have such a great mother and father.

As a freshman at Baruch and a first time college student I believe that procrastination is the single most important thing that hinders me from completing my work on time. This is an especially bad habit that I am trying to break myself of. Whenever, I get an assignment I immediately look at the due date and count the time I have between the present and the due date. However, no matter how hard I try to plan in advance to work on something I almost always leave it to the night before. While that may have worked in high school where the work was comparatively far less difficult it will not cut it in college. The work is simply too much and too involving to leave it to the last minute. Leaving it to the last minute leaves me overwhelmed and frustrated. Most times before a paper is due, I am up late into the night writing, rereading and proofreading what I have written. I know that writing a paper beforehand, and giving myself more time to proofread it, always gives me a better essay.

I need to break myself of the mindset that the assignment is due later so I can push it out of my mind. The moment the work gets out of mind then I forget about it until I hear an announcement in class or I remember from reading old notes that something is due. College professors do not remind me when something is due or not due, so the responsibility lies completely on me. The transition is somewhat difficult because I am accustomed to high school where there are constant reminders as to when something is due. In fact many teachers often take the extra step of getting students emails to remind them when certain assignments are due. None of this happens in college, which gives me a certain amount of liberty and responsibility to make decisions as to how I manage my work load.

This whole procrastination issue I believe cannot be solved overnight. I am trying to balance my time between a job, school and my social life. This juggling act takes its toll on me but I need to understand that no matter what, school comes first before everything else. I am paying for these classes and if I fail them it is only going to hurt me. The professors don’t care about individual students. In a class where they have hundreds of students they cannot be bothered to learn everyone’s name. At the end of the day they are still making their money and my pass or fail means nothing to them. So I’ve learned to put school first before anything else.

In addition the school has provided planners which I do not make good use of. I believe that if I try to write everything down in the planner and utilize all its calendar reminders that I’ll be much better off. If I follow use my planner I’ll be in much better shape.

Procrastinating always leaves me with sleep deprivation because I work late into the night. This continues a cycle where I am less awake and less attentive in class. Not being at my peak hurts me because I absorb less of the lecture and it ends up in a cycle where I am always tired. Being at my peak will help me stop procrastinating because I will be more alert. I will also realize the consequences of leaving an assignment to the last minute. Leaving everything to the last minute results in a meltdown of my mind. I feel all the work pile on and my frustration increases and I get a huge headache. Being sleep deprived isn’t healthy either. My dad always told me to make sure that I got eight to nine hours of sleep no matter what. I often disobey his advice and I finally realize why he says what he does. The human body needs time to rest and recuperate after a long day. Sleeping is the body’s way of resting the mind and repairing any damage. Without a well rested mind I cannot hope to learn.

So in conclusion, what hinders me from doing my work is procrastination. I have realized what it does to me. It makes me turn out lesser quality work and it leads me to not finish some work on time and adds to my sleep deprivation. I pledge myself to stop procrastinating and to take the initiative on my work. I will start my assignments that day I get them!

Leon Vatmakhter

Asking a person who they are is a very complex question, and so this assignment brought me great difficulty. Everyone knows who they are but the problem is putting that into words. Although the following may not be exactly who I am, I believe its close enough.

I feel that to fully understand a person you must first know his past because his history is what makes that person who they are today. So as for me I was born on July 25^th 1992 in Maimonides Hospital in Brooklyn. At that time my family and I were living on ocean pkwy and 18^th ave. In an apartment building in which almost everyone knew each other, all the kids played together and all of the adults sat around chatting. Such circumstances brought everyone a lot close together and so growing up in such a tight knit community brought me to become a very family oriented person. I know that I can always rely on my friends and family and they know they can rely on me. Also from this unique situation I learned that sharing really is caring, sounds corny but is actually true. Because when you’re hanging out with the same people everyday it’s nice to have everyone happy and then everyone has a good time.

The summer when I turned 6 was the first summer that my parents sent me away to summer camp. At first I was a scared of being alone the entire summer, but now I’m very grateful to my parents for all of the lessons that I learned there over the course of 11 summers. Independence was a key trait that I acquired there, as I learned to be self sufficient and learned how to take care of myself, including any problems I ran into. I learned how to make friends and how to keep them. This I find to be very important since friends, real friends, are like your second family and will always help you in your time of need. Lastly I became a pretty good athlete even won the very prestige’s Jeff Herman award for the best athlete in camp.

I think when people first look at me all they see is a skinny, average height, white kid but thank god there’s more to me than that. I’m kind and most of the time will help those who need assistance if they deserve it, because what’s the point of helping out someone if when you need their help they are nowhere to be found. I am trustworthy, always holding my promises. I feel that I have a pretty good sense of humor that I use to break tension and lighten the mood, as one of my philosophies is if everyone is laughing then everyone is happy. And who wants to be serious all the time anyway, that gets boring quickly.

One of my other philosophies that I live my life by is that you live to improve your soul. If you live your whole life and end up the same person as you started then I say you have achieved nothing. I myself don’t know exactly how I plan on improving myself but I know that when the opportunity comes, I will not waste any time. I also believe that hard work is a very important factor of life, especially in a land of opportunity such as America. If you want to make it in this world then you have to work for it, it’s not just going to jump on your lap. Even if you win the lottery there is still a lot of work involved, no one wins there first time.

So in conclusion, next time someone asks me who I am I know exactly what to say. I am Leon Vatmakhter, five foot nine, blonde hair, athletic, funny, kind and believe in hard work and improvement. Other than that you are going to have to come hang out with me.