LC 18

My first semester at Baruch has definitely not lived up to my expectations but I should not have expected much especially since Baruch is a commuter school in the city. I was nervous at first entering college but it’s really no different from high school.  I feel like nothing has changed from what I’ve been experiencing since high school and this college experience is not something I want to keep up with for the next four years. I guess college is pretty much what you make it out to be so I should be trying harder to achieve that true ‘college experience’ or lifestyle. It seems that there is nothing really challenging with my classes and that I’m doing pretty well in school. The workload is a lot at times but mostly because we’re assigned so much reading. It’s also a lot more fast-paced compared to what I’m used to but I’m sure I’ll adjust in time. It helps that I’ve never really liked procrastinating so I have good time management skills which I believe is a factor to my grades. However, it’s more difficult to get As because you only have one semester whereas in high school we had three semesters. The stakes are higher in college but you also have the option to drop classes which is new and helpful.

Staying in the city, I think that I have not changed at all. Everything still reminds me of high school but maybe part of that is because I had an eight class schedule in senior year so I never really had a break from school. My high school helped transition us from high school to college so perhaps that’s also a reason why nothing seems different and also why I don’t feel any different either. Perhaps if I chose to dorm instead  I would have seen more significant changes but as far as I know, I don’t think I have made any change. That doesn’t mean I haven’t though, sometimes you just don’t really notice the change you go through yourself but others see it.

When I first stepped into Baruch College – during the first orientation session – I was excited to be there; I’d waited forever to get to college. I was expecting the place to be so different from my high school experience simply because it wasn’t a high school – even without any effort on my part – and so I quickly began to feel disappointed. However, I attributed it to freshman anxiety (or something of the sort) and muddled through it, passing from each activity to the next and telling myself the actual college part would surpass the orientation blues.

I was right – to a degree. While going to classes was admittedly ten times what the peer bonding exercises at orientation were in terms of enjoyment, they still weren’t exactly what I’d imagined. I’m not really sure why I thought it would be so amazing without me actually going out and making it amazing for myself, but for whatever reason the overall first semester didn’t live up to my expectations. However, I’m not going to complain here because not only would that take up much more room than I have, but also I don’t mean to say there was nothing good about this semester. I met a lot of great people here, and I think that was enough to make up for the bumps along the road. I can’t say that me and everyone else I’ve encountered will be bonded by blood until the day we die (which is actually a rather morbid thought when I reflect on it…) but I can be certain that without the people I met – if they’d been hard to deal with – I wouldn’t be able to control my natural instinct to complain here in this post.

That being said, I think my first semester went well, especially considering stories I’ve heard of other people having disastrous ones. After all, who am I – the one who had the smoothest registration for the spring and winter terms one can ask for – to complain? Except for a select class (that I’m sure a number of you can imagine and those who can’t don’t have to know), I maintained a fairly high overall GPA and didn’t crack under professors’ demands. Personally, I’m glad I had such easygoing professors this semester, because my imagination had always conjured up a universal sense of college professors who either found failing students terribly amusing or had so many more important things to do that they couldn’t bother with anyone – not even to glance at them. Though I suppose I would have changed one thing about my time at the college: I would have tried to be a little friendlier to people by way of going out and getting involved in more. I planned to, initially, but I guess my nerves got the best of me – or perhaps laziness did.

I don’t think I’ve changed much since coming to Baruch – I’d like very much to think I haven’t. With that said, I’m going to hold firm to that and stick to imagining that those who know me will be better judges of alterations to me or my character since arriving. In theory, I should be saying I’ve gotten more responsible or something like that, but in reality I can’t tell: I’d like to think so, but I have a feeling that’s not the case. Yet I don’t think it’s particularly important: there is, at the very least, one half-year left in Baruch for me, and perhaps that will be a better time to assess how I’ve done.

One aspect about me is that I’ve always wanted to travel, explore the world and visit some of the greatest places known to man. I haven’t really been anywhere outside of the area of where I lived in my whole life on long island and my grandmother’s house in Dominican Republic, for the sole purpose of traveling there is to visit my family who normally gather there. Last year my best friend had a strong desire to go to Italy, she studied the language all throughout high school and now she wanted to put her skills to the test by living there for a month, she found this great study abroad program online and convinced me to do it as well. Instead of just choosing a home stay program, where I would simply stay with a host family for a month to get a better look at the culture and become more fluent in speaking the language, I decided to choose a community service program to do something hands-on, meet a great group of teenagers and hopefully make a difference in the process. I decided to go to Costa Rica, the main reason being that I was already fluent in Spanish so it wouldn’t be much of a struggle to manage living there. As we arrived to Costa Rica, our group bonded very quickly and we got along very well, it was an experience I will never forget and even though I felt we could’ve done something more useful with our time and made more of a difference somehow even if that meant focusing on one project for the month, I didn’t regret anything about the experience and our journey. The program was set up so that each week we would be able to perform a different project, the first week we stayed at a farm and tended to the crops and animals there, then the second and third weeks we stayed with two different host families while repairing two different high schools. In the first school we re-tiled the bathrooms and in the second school we painted the school rooms, it actually looked much better when it was finished so that was something I was proud of. During the last week of our stay we helped repair trails at a National Park in the rainforest, which actually got to be very messy at one point when we were covered in mud while working in the rain. I had no regrets coming out of the program, I even formed a great friendship with one of my peers and we still talk today. I didn’t know what to expect coming into this and I’ve always been skeptical when it came to new experiences, but now I know that great outcomes could result in the process. Here is a picture of all of us in the very beginning of our adventure! 🙂

I actually had to look up “Number” in spanish.. God i really need to learn a thing or two about that language. Maybe i should try to do that while in college: learn another language. That’s actually not too bad of an idea. So long as i can balance out learning that with my life, then i’m definitely going to get that down by the end of these four years. See, that’s the trait that I’m steadily picking up: Maintaining structure.  I am far from attaining my goal, but boy am i getting there.

One of the biggest roadblocks for making my daily activities at balance? And if you’re reading this- a block peer or Sophia- I’m sure you can agree damn well with me: computers take up WAY too much time of my life. I like to make a to-do list of the day prior to the actual day and I’m glad that I can get most, if not all, things done on that list. For example, on Saturday i came home 8 AM from work (9 pm- 7 am working… wacky huh?), slept till 11 and then i started banging out my list: took apart my bed to put it at my mom’s place, drove over to get groceries, then to get prescriptions for contacts, get a haircut, do a quick mile run, get to my study group at Baruch, chill outside , finish reading a novel, cleaned my room up, AND took a shower. It was a good day to get things done and  did just that! However, i could have done so much more. By 10 PM, i found myself on my desk Facebooking for hours and online shopping. I could have meditated, had me some coffee, sat out my window, or even read a magazine. But damn you social networking for being so addictive.

See, humans need direction. We are generally lazy and thus, we like t.v. and internet for promoting our nature of sitting while being hypnotized to believe that “FOR THREE SIMPLE PAYMENTS OF ONLY $99.99…(RIP Billy Mays)” is truly a bargain. Television and computers do let us escape from the strains from the day. I could not agree any more. However it fails to give the second element of de-stressing: letting the mind wander about. Like a good PB&J, what good is the PB without the Jay? The Mac without the Cheese? The fries without the Ketchup? You get where I’m going, I’m just starving so I’m rambling with it. =) So computers fail at doing what I want it to do, and so i loathe spending too much time on this thing. I enjoy structuring my day because I put myself in charge of where, when, and how I want to go about getting my life done. Guess I would just like to do more with my time if I had a more thorough design.

I love this picture for numerous reasons. For one, i am that boy at this point in my life. I continue to aspire for more ,but it feels as if i cannot quite reach where I want to yet. And I feel like if I can structure my life better, then I can reach my goal. Metaphorically corresponding to this image, if that boy were to structure the chairs better, I feel that he can indeed grasp the moon that he strongly desires. I also enjoy the fact that in this image, it is a single character. On a side note, I love how the boy is alone in this picture. He put these chairs together, he reaches for it alone in the night, and it is ultimately him that can truly attain his goals for himself. I feel like that is me, and ultimately all of us. Hmm, this can be the next blog topic to dip into. See.. structure? 🙂

One of the most embarrassing moments of my life occurred during one of my first days at Baruch College. All incoming freshmen had to take a math placement test. I was a little worried about the test before taking it. Once it began, I realized it wasn’t that difficult. I finished rather quickly, and was relieved to tell my parents that I did well. As soon as I finished, I asked someone which way to the elevators, and he said “through the double doors on your right.”

I left the room, and pulled out my phone and began to text my family to let them know I was done. I walked down the hallway, glanced up, and saw a set of double doors to my right that was left cracked open. Not paying much attention, I walked through it. When I entered, I looked around, and realized that this wasn’t the correct room. I had walked into the custodian service area. I quickly turned to leave, but the door had just swung closed behind me, and made a low clicking noise as it shut. I tried to open it, and sure enough it was locked.

I ended up spending 15 minutes riding up and down the custodian elevator, floor to floor, just looking for a door that was unlocked. I tried 5 floors, all of which had locked doors. Finally, I went on the elevator and it went up without me pressing a button. A custodian had called it, and finally unlocked a door to let me out.

The picture I choose is of a baseball field. I chose it because baseball has always been my favorite pastime. I started playing when I was really young, and continued to play it this past season. I’ve faced some of my most challenging times on the baseball field, and it has resulted in some of my greatest accomplishments.

It’s really late and there are two weird topics that are coming to my head. One of them is my friend Stan and the other is my experience at Electric Zoo. The first topic would take much more thought and would seem meaningless unless I dwelled deeper into numerous memories both good and bad, thus I shall stick with the latter.

September 5, 2010 was one of the best days of my life. I went to Electric Zoo, which is basically a 12-hour event outdoors at a park, full of some of the world’s best DJs. I won’t get into the fact that basically heard some of the amazing tracks ever. But it was the atmosphere and the people that did it for me.

New York is a place of gangsters and thieves, where soft people don’t make it out here. But at around 5 p.m. that Sunday I couldn’t feel any better. EVERYONE was chilling. That sentence just says it all; there is no other way to put it. Maybe it was the fact that 90 percent of the people where on god knows what drugs, even though I don’t think I saw one fight erupt. All we did that day was just go see a set of a particular artist we like and jam out in the crowded tent. By nightfall there were people raving beautifully, and loud music over taking everyone. Not to mention that the girls were beautiful, straight models, which I could go on much more for but I don’t want to bore the ladies in our class.

I wish I could go in to more detail as to what made this day so amazing but it the type of thing where you have to be there to see it. Basically, everyone was just relaxed, friendly, and free. Come to realize the best word to describe that day was FREE. It’s perfect. One second you can see the weirdest dressed guy and the next you see a girl doing the weirdest dance ever, but on that day at that time it seemed completely normal. I guess the single best thing that was on the day was simply the fact that while I was at Electric Zoo all my worries are gone. As I look back upon it seems somewhat surreal, but that’s just it I had no worries and I think that might be the best feeling in the world.

You see I was done, I was about to post and everything but I realized that on that day I realized a very fearful thing. We knew everyone was on drugs but as the day went on we saw all these gorgeous girls sniffing coke and popping pills. And while it was relaxing being there I realized a very sad thing, that these same girls will be sticks in a few years, with dead brains. Its something that still bothers me greatly today.

The one thing that all Ezooers had in common was that their feet or shoes were so dusty and dirty by the end of the night it was ridiculous. So when I was on the train home I looked at people’s feet to tell if they were from there and maybe share some experiences. The funny thing is that those sneakers I was wearing I had just bought and even if I had known that would have happened I would have wore them anyway. Just because it was so worth it. Looking down at your new sneakers and seeing brown where white use to be makes you realize all that you went through that day and makes it all the more memorable.

Monologue (portion)

When I was maybe five or six years old, my grandmother used to take care of me during the summer breaks, because my parents had to go to work and they couldn’t just leave me at home by myself. She used to take me to a lot of fun places, parks, bus tours around the city, or simply just walk around the neighborhood. That was some good times.

So this one time, she took me to walk around the neighborhood. We came onto this little stone bridge that was built on top of a narrow river. We’d been walking around for the whole morning, so we decided to sit down on the edge of the bridge to rest our feet for a while…

(To be continued in presentation…)

I love the game Minesweeper! I can literally play this game for an hour and a half non-stop! There are a lot of hours I should be putting into studying but instead going into this game. This is the proof of my best achievement on Minesweeper. Although this isn’t the world record (less than 30 seconds on expert), 124 seconds is still a pretty darn good achievement. Call me lame, but without Minesweeper, the world isn’t going to be the same!

Ever since I have started college, I have developed a new fear and that is of revolving door. It has never been a big deal since the only time I’ve use a revolving door is at the mall, not daily like in Baruch. I didn’t expect there to be a revolving door at every building, the vertical campus, the 23^rd building, and the library!

My friends would find me a little queer, who would be afraid of doors. But when I see the people at Baruch spinning those doors, the door seem as if it was going a mile per sec. Why would people spin the doors so fast? It wouldn’t hurt them to go a little slower, I would think as I witness it happen. Sometimes I wonder if other people feel the same way or maybe it’s just an abnormal fear of mine. But when I go into a revolving door that is spinning incredibly fast, I fear that I will injure myself. I fear that my finger would get jammed, or an arm would get crush, or that I wouldn’t realize my hair caught in between the doors and I would end up losing a patch.

In Baruch there are stickers pasted on the regular swinging doors, saying to use the revolving door. I find that ridiculous, the swinging doors are more convenient and safer in my case. But to avoid the worst case scenario, I always try to take caution before stepping through the door. Sometimes when it’s going too fast I would wait awhile for it to slow down before I step in. It could be embarrassing when there is a line of people waiting behind you but I think it’s worth it to be safe.

This picture is a treble chef and base chef forming a heart. This picture shows that I really love music and I feel that life would be very dull without it. Even when I forget to bring my phone to school, I always make sure that my music player is in my bag. It is probably one of the few things I never leave my house without. It helps me stay awake at night, or sleep when I can’t. Music is a necessity in my live and it just won’t be the same without it.

I’m here writing a monologue, and oddly enough I feel that the thing I’m most insecure about it that very thing – writing it. That doesn’t make too much sense when I reflect on it – no offense meant to the instructor, but Freshman Seminar is a pass-fail course, after all – but I can’t help it.

Thinking along those lines, I suppose my real insecurity is one or both of two things; doing work that’s up to par enough so that I don’t embarrass myself handing it in, and public speaking. I’m trying now to determine which it is, and I truly do want to say it’s speaking in front of a mob – organized and relatively calm mob that this class may be – but I’m not sure. I have an odd tendency to worry about my assignments, and not so much doing them as understanding them. After all, it is a little embarrassing (full sarcasm intended) when you pour yourself into an assignment, turn it in, and have the professor and the whole class raise their eyebrows because you did the whole thing wrong. It’s…an epic fail? Is that expression too lame?

Since this monologue is supposed to reveal something about myself, I guess I’ll stay along the lines of insecurity and reveal the shocking truth that I have major anxiety _ I kid you all not. I’m not sure how I really come off to others now, but for most of my life I was the shyest, most reserved kid in the room. Seriously, the parents of some other girl in my kindergarten class complained about me to the principle of the school: they claimed I was haunting their kid or something because I was just standing there like a little miniature stalker. Of course that was a tad….overzealous of them – I was four, after all – but that sort of mentality stuck with me for years. Forget talking to strangers – that defined as people not immediately connected to me, so classmates as well; I’m saying I wouldn’t even dare looking them in the eye. I don’t think I come off as so shy anymore – I suppose you all can be the judges of that – and if I do it’s not because I’m trying like I used to. The way I see it, I’m in New York City: this is definitely the time to live it up.

I chose this image because I think it accurately represents what I was trying to talk about – my anxiety about coming out of my shell before, but the ability to do it later on. Of course, I could have chosen a cast of images to represent that, but this one had an adorable little turtle…or tortoise in it: in short, I couldn’t resist.

I think that’s all I can really say about myself. I would be more personal but…at this time I don’t see too much more to me than that little snippet. I feel guilty, though, after reading all of the other posts to the blog: my anxiety coming back to bite me again I guess. Since there’s little I can do to remedy it at this point, however, I shall resign to sigh, nod my head, and thank you all for listening because I’m sure it hasn’t been the most wonderful experience of your lives to hear me ramble for however long this took.

This is a picture of Columbus Park, a park in Chinatown. It doesn’t look nearly as clean or good in this photo as it does in real life–actually it doesn’t look any noticeably pretty in this photo at all. Ha! It’s actually a very dirty park and most people who go there on a daily basis would know to not stay there too late because rats come out at night. I don’t like this park that much, but this area is significant to me because it’s where for the first time I held hands with a boy in public. That boy is still my boyfriend now.

We knew for about a week that we liked each other, but weren’t sure if we were ready for a relationship, because we were going into college and bound to see each other less. Among the many topics and areas we had discussed while walking around, we were at the moment talking about PDA.  I was talking about how I was repulsed at and could not understand why people made out in public; I didn’t want to seem unloving, expressing this and other negative views on PDA, so added that I thought holding hands was cute. When I said that, he held my hand and asked, “Like this?” We didn’t stop holding hands until it was time to go home. I was turning 18 and I had never walked around holding hands with a boy before.

It wasn’t immediate, but entering a real relationship for the first time affected my view on PDA.  I hated some of what I would regard as the lighter forms of PDA, how some couples would stand around holding each other, or how others would walk around and kiss every five seconds–that doesn’t seem disgusting anymore. It seems sweet. I still think some forms of displaying affection are absolutely horrendous and should never be public, but I realize that I should not judge a person in a bad way just because they show that they like or love someone.  I still don’t like the sight of a couple making out, but I do not anymore develop a prejudicial sense of intense dislike, or a lower level of respect towards them.