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.

Monologue

Among some of the fears that I have, which include scary movies, clowns, and bugs, I am deathly afraid of knives. This fear is only limited to other people handling knives because I have no problem using one but I cannot help the anxiety I feel when someone else is holding one. The feeling gets worse if the person holds the knife towards me. I always imagine that they might clumsily stab me with it so I move out of their direction. For some strange reason, I also don’t like it when knives are left on the table unattended and I’m just sitting there with another person. I feel like the other person might somehow hit the knife really hard and it’ll end up stabbing me across the table. I know that it’s really unrealistic for that to happen but I always have that lingering thought in my mind when I see a knife sitting idly on a table.

Actually, I think that I really don’t trust myself with knives either because I always feel like I’ll drop it and it’ll impale my foot or my leg. It probably sounds crazy but this has actually happened once with a sharp pencil when I was in sixth grade. I borrowed my friend’s pencil which happened to be extremely sharp and then the phone rang so I ran to pick it up. The pencil rolled off the desk and I thought that I would just pick it up after I answered the phone. When I came back to search for it, I couldn’t find it anywhere so I just sat on my chair. It was when I felt something weird on my foot that I noticed the pencil went through my sock and into my foot. My foot still has traces of black pencil lead inside it. If a pencil could do that to my foot, I’m afraid of what might happen if a knife fell instead. This event has definitely traumatized me and is probably a factor as to why I’m so afraid of sharp objects, specifically knives.

Blog

So the picture I chose for my blog post happens to be from when I went to California in the summer by myself with my boyfriend. It was the first time that my parents let me be independent because they’re usually overprotective. I didn’t think that they would have let me travel on my own but eventually they caved in. It was a really great experience for me because when I came back from my trip, they became more trusting of me and less protective. My parents like to baby me and my brother so it was new to try to live on my own for two weeks without mom cooking dinner and washing the laundry. Through my trip, I definitely became a much more responsible and independent person which is a crucial part of growing up. This photo also has another significance which is that it’s from the movie, 500 Days of Summer and I thought that it would be cool if I went to the same location where part of the movie was filmed. Although the park where the bench is located isn’t as glamorous as it is in the movie (there are many homeless people sleeping in the park), I actually enjoyed the movie so it was nice that I got to sit on the same bench that the actors did.

Well, I’m Carrie and I don’t know how to exactly characterize myself. It’s a difficult question to answer because I could be ambitious yet lazy and stubborn but open-minded at the same time. If I had to describe myself, I’d probably say I’m an introvert however I’m as much of a talker as I am a listener. I don’t believe that I’ll be changing much in the future since it doesn’t seem like I’ve changed in the past but it takes time to see a change in yourself since the change starts out small.

College life hasn’t been too different from high school and it makes me question whether I should have went away for college instead. It’s pretty much the same except there’s more reading which is bad for me because I usually skim. I’m still trying to get used to the hour and something classes which are so much longer compared to what I hear from other college students. There’s a lot of free time but at the same time there isn’t since classes end late in the afternoon. On the plus side, three day weekends are always great. I guess I’ll just wait and see where college takes me and if it changes me in the process.