My name is Elizabeth Yusupova, I’m 18 years old and now I’m a freshman at Baruch College.
I am a fun, enthusiastic and opinionated individual who is always cautious before beginning something new. Stemming from this fact about myself, I’m am slowly but steadily adjusting to life in Baruch. It’s a new school, with new teachers, new classmates and new surroundings. I am currently still in a cautious stage, I arrive to class too early, I sit too quietly and don’t overly participate as I would have in high school. One of my concerns is that I won’t be able to adjust to Baruch at all. Since I started here I feel like I’m coming to college in the morning, going to classes and then going straight back home. I’m concerned that I won’t take an interest in any of the clubs offered here. I actually have not gone looking for anything that would grab my interest and am just waiting for something to jump out at me, that may be a problem. Another concern is that when I begin to better adjust I will begin to take things for granted, such as waiting another 10 minutes before leaving my house because yesterday the train came late, or coming into class unprepared because the professor usually doesn’t ask about the homework. I am aware that I have had these lazy moments in high school, and even though I am aware of them, I hope that I will now have more control and be more responsible. Building off that concern, I’m also worried about time management. Let’s say I find clubs that I’m interested in, I wonder whether or not I will be able to manage extra circulars, with my class assignments and my job. This is a major concern for me because if I get involved in too many things, I don’t want to start slacking in my responsibilities. The difference between high school and college, from what I have observed, is higher standards for work and timeliness, and an overall increase is personal responsibility. There is more free time in college, whether it’s between classes or afterward and now I have this freedom and I don’t know what to do with it, whereas in high school I had a strict schedule of classes and didn’t have this problem. Also, I feel like being in college changes opportunities that I have, like my parents are more trusting of me. I think that my first year of college will be overwhelming and will make me more responsible with my time management and quality of my work. I also hope to actually learn something whether it be about a particular subject or about college life in general that will make the remainder of my time here like a real college experience.