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.