Monthly Archives: October 2010

I’ll like to identify myself as an average kid with a not so average tan.  Some characteristics that I like about myself are that I’m always up for trying something new and that I’m loyal to my friends. What I don’t like about myself is that I procrastinate way too much and that I’m shy when I meet new people. I’m afraid of heights and bees, but I’m most afraid of losing my friends. Ice cream, chocolate, running, biking, being by water like a river or the ocean and hanging out with friends makes me happy. Some things that are important to me are my friends, my family, my health and getting an education.   Moment s I felt most empowered was when I used to play handball and the people that I’m playing against are better than me; that always drives me to go harder even if I know I’m going to lose.

My school year is starting off kinda bad I guess. I’ve been procrastinating a lot of the reading and doing the essays and I guess I’m starting to feel the negative effects of that on my grades. My biggest challenge in school right now is just to get rid of the procrastination. Every time I decide to start a paper, I always find an excuse to give myself 5 or 10 more minutes of doing nothing important and that usually ends up with me staying up until 4 or 5 trying to finish the paper. I guess the only thing I’m enjoying about college is that there is so much more free time then there is in high school, or maybe that’s just cause I push everything away until the last minute.

My personal motto is go with the flow, let whatever happens happen.

Hey guys! As you probably already know my name is Maria Vlahopoulos and I’m a freshman at Baruch College. When people first meet me, they might think I’m a bubbly short Greek girl, but when you get to know me, you realize I’m much more than that. I was raised in a very religious Greek Orthodox household. Greek was my first language, I did not learn English until I was about 5 (which is hard to tell because I do not have a thick Greek accent.) I went to Greek private school for about 10 years, which had it’s ups and downs. Since I was the girl who always hung out with the guys, I was the one girl they blamed for everything. I got detention for almost everything I did even when I didn’t do anything wrong (or so I thought.) The plus of Greek school was the fun Greek plays we did and the friends I made that I’m still close with today.

One thing you guys probably already know about me, because I talk about it  every week in this class, is that I play softball. I’ve been playing since I was 7 and I never plan on stopping. Playing softball has shaped me into the person I am today. It has transformed me into the persistent leader I am today. Right away when I started high school I got into many clubs and sports. I bled blue and orange which were our school’s colors. My senior year I was captain of the softball team, and co-captain of the volleyball team and the Robotics team. Balancing all that and two AP’s was pretty difficult, but I learned to balance my time and still have time for myself.

I see myself as very optimistic. I’ll always try to find the “bright side” of every tough situation I or someone else may be in. One thing I hate is seeing people sad. It gets me just as sad as them sometimes even worse. I’ll find anyway to make a joke just see that person smile or chuckle while their crying. From what my friends say my shoulder is a pretty good place to cry on. I don’t tell them what they want to hear I tell them the truth. On March 18, 2010 disaster struck. My best friend’s sister passed away; and I was in complete shock. This young 20 year old girl, that me and my best friend annoyed as if she were my own older sister, passed away. I didn’t know what to say to my best friend. Sorry wasn’t good enough. Then I realized that sometimes not saying anything was fine. Just being a shoulder for her to cry was enough. I knew at that point, that I needed to be with her every step of the way. I was with her everyday, making sure she was always occupied with something, to get her mind off of it until she was able to accept it. It was at that point that I realized you really don’t know what you have until it’s gone. As cliche as that phrase is, it’s true.

I’ve always tried to find something cool with my initials, because I feel like everyone has a cool acronym for their initials. The only interesting thing I can come up with is the my initials stand for Momentum which is  P=mv. Another cool fact is that my dad’s name is Leonidas. That’s the same name used in the leader of the 300 pack. But, my dad is nothing like the leader of the 300 pack. He’s 5’2 and isn’t Spartan.

Some hobbies that i enjoy besides sports are crocheting and playing the piano. With winter coming up, I’ve already purchased many balls of yarn to make scarves. (If you want one let me know after class and I can give you a good deal) I’ve been playing the piano since I was 6, but I recently stopped because 24 hours each day isn’t enough to do everything. During the winter break, I plan on playing again and getting back to how good I used to be. If you ever come to my house you’ll find someone arguing and someone cooking. It’s pretty much a typical Greek family in my house, and I love every minute of it. My parents are pretty over-protective. One thing they won’t let me do right now is dorm, but I know it’s because they love me and care for me. Baruch hasn’t changed me yet it’s just made me more stressful but happy to know that I have softball next semester so that’s something to look forward to. I hope to adjust to the college life soon so I can enjoy my next 4 years.

My favorite speech had to be Lucas’ monologue because he had a very confident voice and he talked a lot of interesting things. I also like Xiaoli’s monologue because I also understand how she felt when she didn’t get a good grade and how hard she worked to achieve her goal. I can definitely relate to that as well.

Hi! My name is Sally Liang. I identify myself as a young adult who tries to make the best out of everyday. In my life, the most important role that I play is being a college student. As a college student, my first priority is schoolwork. When I first entered college, I tried to get rid of my procrastinating habits and finish my work ahead of time, but it didn’t exactly happen during the first few weeks of school. It is getting better though.

What I like best about myself is when I start something; I always try to finish it. Sometimes, I would run out of patience and be on the verge of giving up, but in the end, I will always go back to it. One example of this would be when I first learned how to play sudoku. On my first attempt, I tried plugging in numbers for about an hour and still I couldn’t solve it. My eyes were getting blurry from looking at the numbers and I was just running out of patience. At that time, I did give up on it, and left it alone for a while, but my mind kept going back to that one game. Finally, I just restarted the soduku all over again. It took me even longer, but in the end, I got it. I guess I integrated this habit of mine into my daily life too.

My personal motto is you should always finish one thing before you start doing something else. This is only because I don’t like multitasking. When I multitask, I can never finish both things. I find that when I multitask, it actually takes longer to complete them, as oppose to doing one thing at a time. One classic example would be doing homework while watching TV. The homework may take me only an hour to complete, but when I watch TV, it takes three or four hours. In addition to this, I was rushing through it, so the quality is not as good.

The thing I enjoy most is traveling, but sadly, I do not do this often enough. Traveling makes me happy because I like the anticipation of what I will see when I get to a new place. I like to get out of the city and see something other than tall skyscrapers and feeling the rush of New York City. I like it when I am at a place where everything just slows down. A couple of years ago, I went to Texas and I found this in Texas. The streets were practically empty, except for cars. You can maybe see three people on the street at one time. During the evening, I went to the nearby lake and there were a lot of people just strolling and relaxing near the banks of the water. It was just so different from New York because the atmosphere was so much lighter and stress free.

A very distinct memory of when I felt empowered was on the ride to take the specialized high school exam. On that day, my uncle was driving my cousin and me to take the test. At that time, I think my uncle was actually more nervous about the test than we were because he kept asking us what we need help on. He even brought along a practice book to show us how to do a certain math problem. As we were getting off from the car, he encouraged us to do our best and kept telling us that we can get into one of the seven specialized high school. After the test, I got a major headache, but a few months later, I found out that I got into Tech. Then, four years later, I am here at Baruch. 

When I first got into Baruch, I was intimated by the school itself. It might sound surprising, considering I came from a big high school, Brooklyn tech with its nine and plus floors, but I guess it just seem bigger because I was unfamiliar with everything. At first, I felt that it was a lot to take in, but gradually, I assimilated into the school. I finally got used to my schedule; know where I am supposed to be at and that feeling of being “lost” went away. My biggest challenge right now is managing my time. I feel that this is the time where work starts piling up and I just need to get rid of procrastinating habit. If I can manage to do that, then I think I will do fine in college.

My favorite monologue would have to be Lucas. Although he was the first one to go up, he still manage to get a few chuckles out of the crowd. I liked the part where he says his house straddles two places at once. I thought that was pretty cool and also the part about hunting for ghosts.

Hello, my name is Han. The last few weeks have gone pretty well. My biggest challenge in college right now is arriving at classes on time; I always seem to be doing something. Even when I’ve completed my scheduled tasks, I would suddenly remember something else that I think would be better completed early. I can correct my punctuality issues by becoming more efficient in my organization, prioritization, and execution of tasks.

I’ve enjoyed my philosophy class the most. Most other subjects, ranging from literature to political science, have roots firmly grounded in philosophy. Also, exploring our ancient predecessors’ thought processes and seeing that they were not so different after all are immensely refreshing. Even great minds like Decartes and Immanuel Kant faced problems and puzzles they could not immediately solve. I’ve pondered many phenomena before, and although philosophical text does not provide a definitive answer to all of them, combination and application of great philosophers’ ideas is a great start.

I feel most empowered when I’m involved in dialectics with either my peers or a professor. Being able to counter others’ arguments while defending my own keep my mind active and engaged. Likewise, my most embarrassing moments often comprise vocalization dead-ends wherein, not having thought of what to say before diving into conversation, I spew only tangentially relevant sentences that provides not strong support, but only a façade of knowledgeableness. I think my best trait is my willingness to learn, as I find learning enjoyable. Unfortunately, various constraints such as time and other responsibilities conflict with this.

My personal motto is “every man is the artisan of his own fortune,” because I think everything can be done well by simply focusing one’s own efforts into a worthy cause. I don’t think I actively play one role; rather, I play many roles for myself, depending on what the situation requires.

The thing most important to me now is obtaining all A’s. Consequently in this context, I feel most happy when I feel that I’m performing well in my classes. Conversely, I’m most afraid of not performing up to par. The first few weeks have been relatively mild. However, as midterms and more advanced topics draw closer across the board, I’ll have to raise my concentration and effort accordingly. I hope I can accomplish that.

I don’t have any electronic photos of myself, so I’ll share this:

which I thought was really cool.

I liked victor’s presentation because he never looked at the paper and he just spoke his monologue with comfortable voice. That made me feel comfortable to listen to him even though he said little bit of curse.

First, one of things that I like myself is my name “Han-Sol.” My name was made by famous Korean Buddhist monk. As he made my name, he said my name will be widely spread out. I really believe that vision and hope it will become true. Another thing that I like myself is unconditional love. I never try to hate somebody. I try to give kindness and to be friendly to people. I don’t want to make any discomfort and hatred between my relationships. The things that I don’t like are timidity and shyness. I don’t usually stand in front of people because I worry how people think about me or laugh about me. I try to fix those things because I just realized standing out to the people rather than being nothing. Another thing that I don’t like is that I am a poor talker. I always spent most of time of conversation to listen to another and I don’t speak to people a lot.  These days, I try to talk first and to lead a conversation that I can make.

            Thing that makes me happy is vacation because I don’t have to feel stress for doing class assignments and I can enjoy my hobbies all the time. My friends and family make me happy. When I have hard time, they are always by my side and try to help me. Every time I am with them, I feel really comfortable and cheerful.

            In school, I think I’m still adjusting to this college. It is hard to manage my time to do too much class assignments. I spend whole day for doing class assignments and readings. Sometimes I procrastinate and just finish essays and assignment one day before the due. I need to spend my time to complete my assignments first and enjoy rest of my time to do my hobbies and to hang out with my friends. I want to make many new friends because most of my high school friends went to other colleges. So I think it is a chance to meet new people.

Hardworking is important to me. Even though I have ability to reach the highest goal, it is difficult to achieve a goal because I don’t work hard. My mother always told me that I can do everything I want if I try harder, but if I don’t, there will be nothing I can do. So I try to make effort to achieve my goal.

My motto is “Reality is Wrong Dreams are for Real” which means we shouldn’t give the reality because our dream will come true in it. It tells me that I shouldn’t mind what other people think of me and I should keep dreaming, but without escaping from reality

Kimberly Delgado’s speech was my favorite because it was inspiring and motivating. I especially liked the part when she spoke about the stereotypical role of women and she refuses to live up to it.

Hi, my name is Sandy Liang and I like to read, listen to music and take long walks on the beach… No, I’m just kidding. This is not a “About Me” section on an online dating site. But anyway, my name is Sandy. Ever since Junior High School people have called me Sandy Cheeks. You know, that squirrel from SpongeBob? At first I didn’t like to be called a squirrel’s name because I found it insulting. But then I thought, why not? Sandy Cheeks is pretty cool. I’m talking about the character of course. I’m not speaking about myself in third person, because that would just be weird… But that squirrel knew Kung-Foo! How awesome is that? Although I did find it funny that I was being related to a squirrel that was an expert in Kung-Foo, since I’m Chinese and all. But sadly that stereotype cannot apply to me because I do not know the art of Kung-Foo. Disappointed? I know. I did try to learn when I was younger though. My grandfather tried to teach me. The first thing he made me do was a horse stance (demonstrate). He wanted to see if I had strong legs and firm feet to stand my ground. I was in this position for about an hour. My grandfather decided to test me by coming up behind me, and kicking my right leg. I, of course, fell right to the floor. That was the first and last attempt he made to teach me Kung-Foo because, according to him, I was not “made for Kung-Foo”.  Thanks a lot gramps! *Thumbs up*.

It’s a disappointment that I don’t know Kung-Foo. But I do know how to play volleyball, and I’m pretty darn good at it too! Most people would look at me and just assume that the sport I must be great at is… handball. But no, sorry to disappoint you again, my favorite sport is volleyball. I was part of my high school varsity volleyball team for both my junior and senior year. In my senior year, I was captain of the volleyball team. We’ve had our wins and our losses, but, honestly, those didn’t really matter to me. I know it sounds cliché, but I just love the game. It’s so much fun. Whenever I have time, I would go back to my high school and help out with the present team. My high school coach knows how much I love the sport, so he gave me the position as the part time assistant coach. I get to help out AND play my favorite sport. Isn’t that great?

Volleyball really is my “getaway” from all the stressful things I have to deal with everyday, like school and… well, mainly school because it really is just so stressful. Don’t you agree? (Pause) The assignments just keep on coming, and I hardly have time to do anything I want to do. I think volleyball is the only thing that’s keeping me from going insane! But I got to do what I got to do, right? And school is just something I got to do. It feels like torture being in class, or when you’re in the process of typing that long… long essay. But the way I look at it is that it will be all worth it in the end. What I always tell myself is, “Endure the crap now, and better things will come later.” Many people compare life to a rollercoaster, and I do believe life is like a rollercoaster because there will always be its ups and downs. Some days I may feel miserable, but I believe, it is with no doubt, that something great will eventually happen and it will make up for all the “crap” I’ve endured. This is just something I tell myself to keep me going, and not just simply give up.

Well, I found it difficult to write a monologue about myself, but hopefully you all learned a bit about Sandy Cheeks, and enjoyed it as well. Thank you.