Monologue

My name is Victor Huang. If I could find the right words to describe myself, I would say that I am very outgoing, but only to an extent. Generally at first I can be really shy and timid, but once you get to know me, I’m no longer shy. A lot of people including my friends say I’m very helpful towards them. I cannot always agree with them, because I sometimes find the time and the need to irritate my friends. Furthermore a lot of people say I’m humorous. I find this true, but only to a small degree. Most of my jokes are nothing more than toilet humor. In general, I always hold an uncertain outlook on life; this can be the result of school, where I’m usually uncertain with the course material. The school year at Baruch is going decent so far, as I expected it to be. College is different from high school because the teachers don’t baby the students. Every student is responsible for doing his or her work. I got adjusted to this already in high school, some of my teachers were vindictive towards the students and I will never forget some of them who completely changed my views on school mostly in a negative way though. The workload is too bad considering the fact that I do absolutely nothing at home anyways. In my high school, there was a lot of work to do. I’m glad I actually did most of it because it made the transition from high school to college easier.  My main challenge in college at the moment is calculus class. Math terrified me in my junior year of high school so much that I decided not to take it in senior year. Merely passing the course will probably be satisfactory with me. Another challenge in college is paying for the textbooks, these textbooks are extremely pricey and mostly no more than a scam to trick students for their money and thus make the publishing companies more rich. But I digress, at some point the textbooks will be required for class, but most of the time I buy used ones solely for the fact that they are cheaper. I decided not to rent textbooks because they come at a high price and they cannot be sold to the incoming students of next semester or term. I’m planning to sell my textbooks once I don’t need them. At the same time, I feel cheated because once you pay for the textbooks; you let the seller acknowledge that you, yourself are willing to pay an outrageous amount for a textbook. I feel exploited because of that. Another thing regarding economic issues is student debt. Fortunately my parents could pay the tuition without having to take out a loan, so I’m in a good spot right now. Credit card companies think they can appeal to me with their advertisements, but I know the scheme behind credit cards. With this in mind, some people can categorize me as cheap. I’m not offended by this and I actually find this to be absolutely true most of the time. I was raised to be cheap, so I can’t really deny it and I don’t. Being frugal in this economy has many positive benefits. However there are many benefits to college as well. The most important is more freedom. In high school I was bombarded with work to do, but now its not the case with college… yet. The free time allows me to sleep more at home, and I cherish every moment of it. Hopefully in college, I will learn to be more disciplined as well as more independent and hard working. Currently I have a job on Fridays, when school is not in session. This job should make me more independent as well. Commuting to Baruch College is not an issue for me most of the time because I live pretty close to the school compared to most people, hence why I chose this school instead of Hunter College, which was my second choice. I really identify myself as a New Yorker, especially when commuting to school: I would always pretend to mind my own business when in fact I always stare at other people when they are not looking. In addition, I always find the urge to look at other people’s newspapers when I’m in the subway. It is really just a part of New York City culture and cannot be explained in more precise terms.