Who Are WE? We're PR3!

Monologue

I will tell you about me, but you will never quite see the whole picture… I am an enigma, so I’ve been told. I am a spark-plug, a bad influence, a deviant, a philosopher, an artist, a best friend, a narcissist, a habitual procrastinator, basically anything that suits me at a given time. I enjoy satisfaction, I do what I can to guarantee it. I have no known fear, but I’m sure it will present itself soon enough. Life can, at times, be hard. “Choice is an illusion created by those with power to fool those without.” I take this to heart, and i choose not to be the latter. I am a character, brooding and sarcastic. My life is the theatre. You are my audience. I am not here to entertain you.

My name is Ahreana Alexis Blair, its sounds serious and for good reason. I think very highly of myself and this is how I show myself to others. I don’t shake easily, nor deter or falter. Once I decide on something I defend it dogmatically. I can be very judgmental at times, and most of the time it is to my benefit. First impressions are highly effective and are often all I need to get a good hold on you. I am consistently divulging myself in aesthetics, its a part of my life, as shallow as that may seem. I don’t care. Most people I meet, are intimidated by me at first glance, apparently I have this serious looking face; I’m sorry I just cant get rid of it. I like making friends but will let some go if I have to. I’m very controlling and domineering, and its off-putting at times. I am what I am, I’m not changing.

As junior year of High School came around, the question of what I was supposed to do in college also came with it. I never had and still don’t have any particular passion I would like to focus on as my career, so it was difficult for me to settle on what I should do, and what I should major in and so on. As I began to think about what I would make of my future, I was almost forced to contemplate over who I was as an individual. Although I still do not have a concrete answer to that, I am now able to at least discuss who I might be.

In this mini period of self discovery I realized that my most valuable trait is also my biggest flaw. In order to be happy I need to make people happy which often times leads me to prioritize other people’s wants and needs. This characteristic is critical to my identity. My goal is always to satisfy others. In my home, I am always attempting to please my parents by bringing home good grades, taking care of the house work, and trying my best to not be a financial burden. With my friends, I never make the final decisions in any circumstance we are in. I always let others make the decisions because my satisfaction comes from theirs.

These actions are most likely rooted in the fact that I might just be scared to be alone. If I prioritize other peoples wants and needs I avoid being rejected by someone. However, I am perfectly happy when I am alone. But because I have people in my life that I love and love me, I know I actually will never be alone. No one ever really is. Which brings me to the only passion I have that I can think of; love. I am very passionate about my friendships and my relationship. My best friends are not just friends they are my brothers and sisters. They are my family. My friends, boyfriend and most importantly my immediate family are the people I will always remember no matter what situation I am in because of the love that bonds us. Love is what drives me to do what I do, to be what I am and isake in my life.

Aughhh. 6:45 a.m. WHY IS IT SO FREAKIN’ EARLY?
Okay Crystal, you better make it to class on time today. You can’t be late again. If you walk into class again and there’s a lecture going on, everyone’s going to stare at you like,
“This idiot’s late again”
My eyes are like little red poofs, and they’re smaller than usual. And you’re breaking out. It must be from all that sleep that you’re not getting. Seriously, you need to work on this whole, not sleeping enough thing. You told yourself that you were going to go to bed by 1 a.m. What did you do? You went on Facebook until two in the morning chatting away, with that annoying popping sound. Pop, pop, pop. Then you started your homework…WHICH YOU DIDN’T FINISH! Crystal, you need to get it together. You’ve got some serious time management issues. And you need more sleep. When you come home, you’re going to take the best nap ever.
I HATE SCHOOL. I hate that Fing commute and the random guy on the subway that likes to lean on the pole when my hand is there. I hate the long walk from the station. I hate situating myself in that little teeny desk with squeaky chairs. I hate thinking in the morning!
At least you don’t have math today. Calculus at 8:40 in the morning? Seriously? I can’t form sentences in the morning, let alone look at x^2+2x, squiggly line, asymptotes, parabolas, and curvy looking f, stuff. It doesn’t help that the professor chews up the end of every sentence. But, you really need to stop texting and drawing ugly unicorns in class. You were never great in math in the first place.
That test yesterday was awful. The last one I took before that one was like two years ago. Every time I started a new problem, I kept going “WHAAAAT IS THISSSSSS!!!” The people next to you must have thought you were some moron. Crystal, you really can’t fail this class though. If Mama Lee doesn’t murder you first, then you’ll be forced to stay at that stagnant position at Hollister saying “Hey, what’s up!” making $9 an hour. Not to mention the fact that you’re going to live with mom and dad forever. No wealthy man wants marry a failure. You won’t be allowed to have pets because mom hates them, so you’ll just be alone forever eating spicy ramen noodles because that’s all you can afford. Whatever, just don’t fail. It’s that simple.

But really, what the fack goes on with that calculator. They asked what the biggest obstacle would be this semester. It’s definitely that TI-89. Plus those so called escalators that don’t move which you trip up almost everyday. Who falls UP the stairs!? Gosh, I’m so lame. It’s no wonder that I’m such a loner, in my one man wolf pack. I’m clumsy, uncoordinated, I have dorky glasses, and I laugh at my own really bad jokes.. I guess I have really nice, fine, straight, luxurious hair. But these bangs are always out of place. You’re not so bad looking, and you have freckles. You don’t have a really great personality, but you’re kind of intelligent. Still you always say stupid things, and you make mess out of everything. and why do you always make conversations awkward. You are so freakin’ awkward, and shy for no reason. Plus, you’re short. Actually, you’re just funsized. You’re not yellow. You’re golden. You should tell some kid you’re Filipino today, but you’re a terrible liar.

It’s always nice to having my ego fluffed. I’m sure I’m not the only one that enjoys it. I’m so full of it sometimes. But I guess if Christina Aguilera can tell herself she’s beautiful, so can I. HAHA. I’m so funny. No one else thinks so, unfortunately.
But really, love yourself, even for your imperfections. You can handle whatever life gives you because you take everything one stupid escalator- step at a time.
Who are you? You’re Crystal Lee. Every morning, you turn your swag on. You enjoy the little things in life like the top of crème brule, when you don’t have to wait for the train, and you’re your favorite song comes on the radio. You’re alone first in your wolf pack, and others will join later because you’re sincere, clever, modest, quirky, soft spoken, ridiculously sarcastic, and most of all you’re you.
Just remember what Marilyn Monroe said,

“It is better to be absolutely ridiculous than absolutely boring.”

There are so many things I’d like to know about myself. And the things that I do, I wish I knew for sure. Because a fact is only a fact if there is known evidence. I’m constantly changing. My opinions, my ideas, my pure knowledge. It’s all kinetic. I am human though, a living, breathing, speaking, walking, and learning human being. With the positive however comes the negative. I fear, I love, I hate, I make good, I do bad, I mess up, and I make right. I know that every action and emotion I go through will be validated by the success I will potentially earn. Earn, not receive. I believe success comes in all forms. Whether comes in a personal, educational, or career sector. This is where I fall short. Each of these types of success brings its successes and fear.

                Personal success to me goes hand in hand with finding your own identity. Something most people go to college to find, and others never find it. I believe in my short 18 years and 7 months I have an idea of who I am. I am a strong willed, hard headed, caring, intelligent young woman who always seeks a challenge for a potential growth. This personality has yielded me to my friends who also make me who I am. Part of each of them lives in me and encourages me to do things that I normally would never do. It does not matter who or what I fear I know that my friends will always persuade me to be a better person. And love….as a wise friend one wrote “love is probably the best invention of voluntary motivation to do anything that comes along.” I know that no matter how badly I may fight with the ones that I love, they are making me a better person deep down inside. Each argument sticks to the back of my mind, correcting my wrong doings. Things like this bridge the gap between my personal and educational life.

                As of this day, my educational and my careers sectors are one in the same. It is MY JOB to go to school; a completely social and educational event. I know at a college level the friends…and enemies I make now will become permanent facets in my life. This is where my fear comes in. My fear to fail always prevails over me, and the fear of leaving this school without any type of lifelong connections. My family has always told me how important these friendships are imperative. So what if I am to make more enemies than friends. What if I leave and cut our time in half. What if what I learn here is different from what I will need to know much later on? It’s all so subject to change. Fearing that if I do poorly in school always pushed me to do more, because in my strong opinion fear facilitates action, no matter what you do. If I feared nothing, nothing would get done. Point blank.

“You guys might now know this, but I consider myself a bit of a loner. I tend to think of myself as a one-man wolf pack…” – Hangover

For the most part, everyone pretty much knows who I am, on a first name basis that is. What people don’t understand is that there is more than meets the eye with me, and I guess that goes with a lot of other people. When I think about it, I don’t consider myself to be a very interesting person. So what, I have a few interesting experiences I could talk about but how long could I ride that boat for? I need to start making something out of myself..

When I think about it, growing up in Italy has given me a totally different perspective of the world. I look around now, especially in Staten Island, and honestly, I am disgusted with this generation of teens. And the worst part of it is, its not going to get any better. Staten Island is not a place to raise your children. I know I’m not raising mine there. What were my parents thinking when they brought us over here? I didn’t think my life in Italy was that bad, but I had to follow what my parents said; after all, it was for the better…that’s what they told me. And I guess yea, there are more opportunities, blah blah blah, but did they know that it was going to be like this? This screwed up? It seems like no one here knows what a family really is. I consider myself to be very family oriented and it disturbs me to see this generation of kids treat their parents and elders with no respect at all. I have a lot of criticisms towards Americans, and I guess that is partially because I am very judgmental. Its not my coolest attribute, but its one of mine none the less. As much as I don’t want to, subconsciously I always judge judge judge. At the end of the day, I just don’t want to be considered an American. There is nothing wrong with being American, but I don’t really find much pride in it. I feel like the American mind is corrupt and greedy. I fear that if I become fully Americanized that I will loose my values and traditions. That is because to be American you have to do American things. You know, just recently, about a few weeks ago, my father became an American citizen. He was so happy, my family was so happy. I…I only acted happy. Why couldn’t he just stay a citizen of Italy? I feel like my family has lost a part of its identity because of this. I’m not afraid of many things, but I am afraid of breaking close family ties. I just hope we don’t become like typical American families, and I’m just stereotyping here.

I look back at the answers I wrote down in class and I notice that they all had to do with family and friendship. I guess that’s just who I am. I really didn’t know what to write about, but we were told to be personal and I think that this is pretty personal, and I’m actually having doubts about sharing this with everyone..

Simplicity is easy to describe but difficult to achieve.

Our first free-write question asked us to write about one thing that we like about ourselves. I realize now that what I put, patience, is a quality that I don’t really have. When I can’t get something done I’ll let it bother me to no end. Hell, even if the person in front of me knocks me off my walking pace, I can’t help but get anxious and try my best to get around them.

Something that I do have, and like about myself, is understanding. There are some really ignorant people out there that think that everyone else is wrong. But I know that everyone has their own problems in life, and their own ways of dealing with them. But just because I understand why someone is the way they are, doesn’t mean that I have to agree with them. Or even like them.

I don’t like changing for others. If someone tells me that I should stop wearing or doing something, I’ll want to do the absolute opposite. If I want to change something, I’ll do it myself when I have the motivation to. Some of this attitude is also used towards my parents.

I have a weakness of insecurity. I usually take care of this through some sort of bodily movements. Either I’m shaking my leg up and down while sitting, tapping a pen against the desk, or just tapping my fingers. This isn’t very uncommon, I guess. I came into high school with not a lot of self esteem, and it took some building to set everything straight. I met some really beautiful souls there, who I hope will stick by me for the rest of it all.

My family has shaped a lot of me. Growing up, their only way of punishing me was by making me feel guilty. Which is worse than just getting grounded, I think. Their reverse psychology still stops me from doing some things that tempt me, because I don’t want to feel the guilt of being the reason for their anger. My mom is amazing when it comes to talking about family gossip, shopping, cooking, and basically anything emotional. My dad is there for intellectual talks. Even if I don’t respond, my dad could sit for a whole hour telling me about why this or that happened in history. It’s all very intriguing. My brother, who’s older than me by 4 years, and I have practically nothing in common. Maybe only that we both come from the same family.

I like to live by the quote, “Carpe Diem,” meaning, “seize the day.” This quote means that you shouldn’t let anything hold you back, and do more than just exist. I believe that things happen for a reason; that it’s more than just coincidence. So even if something wasn’t meant to be, life goes on.

I’d like to add a quote by Michael Scott from The Office:

“There are certain defining moments in a person’s life. The day he’s born. The day he grows hair. The day he starts a business and the day he sells that business back to Dunder Mifflin. What have I learned from all of this? It is far to early to tell. All I know is that I’m flying high and I don’t even want to think about it. I just want to enjoy it.”

I don’t understand why people always think of making themselves happy… I don’t see happiness in that at all. It seems very selfish to make yourself happy. Don’t people feel happy when they make others happy?

I always try to make others happy before I make myself happy, I don’t why. Numerous people question me why. I tell them I don’t know why. It’s just the way I am I guess.

People always tell me, you should always make yourself happy before concerning yourself with others. I don’t understand, how can I be happy, when there are others that are in the same situation as you? Isn’t it hard to be happy with others suffering around you? But if I make these people around me happy, wouldn’t I be happy too?

It’s confusing; sometimes I don’t even understand myself. Why do I try so hard to make others happy instead of making myself happy? Is it the feeling of satisfaction I get after helping others becomes happy?

Like this one time, one of my friends felt really down and he started to post depressing posts all over Facebook. I was in a depressed state too, so I know how he felt. However, I felt like I needed to help him in order for me to lift myself out of my own depression. I tried my best to convince not to be so emotional, give life one more chance. Even though, he was really stubborn, he tried to be happier. In a few hours, he turned a 180 becoming a positive person instead of the pessimistic person he always represented. I don’t know what I did right but I don’t think I can convince myself to be happier with everything I said.

However I indeed became happier when he became happy. It’s weird, happiness is so contagious. Once someone else has it, you’re bound to catch some symptoms no matter how strong your immune system may be. Happiness is so mysterious; how I obtain it in this bizarre manner, I have no idea. But I have made this into my motto: make others happy, because you’re going to catch it.

*I wanna change it but ill do it when i have time*

Harry Dana
My Monologue

After being in college for a month or so, I’m starting to learn the system a little bit better. Getting to know the teacher’s and what they expect from me. Honestly speaking I’m not so cut out for college, some people that I know they work, they go out at night and they still pull in amazing grades. These people have no problem to sit in the library for 6 hours at a time. For me to do that I would probably have to get paid. That doesn’t mean that I should give up, it just means either, I have to try much harder then they do or I just have to hope that college doesn’t get much harder then this.
I wanted to go into a little bit about a free write question you gave us to do in class once. You asked us what our personal motto was and I answered “don’t worry be happy”. Interesting point here Bob McFerrin is the true composer of this song. Huge classic rock fan by the way, also love house music, I DJ hear and there, ill get into that, maybe. Anyways I was saying that yes that’s the mottoI like to live by. Although sometimes being to chilled can bite me in the ass. People can take advantage of me; abuse their privileges so to speak. One of my friends been sleeping on my couch for the past 2 weeks I don’t say anything of course, its just one of many examples. It also doesn’t help my procrastination problem. Being worried about paper’s and test that are coming up isn’t all that bad. My problem is I keep telling myself that really all I need to do is graduate and not really care about my GPA so much, I mean its not going to say my GPA on my diploma. If I keep that attitude I’m probably not even going to graduate.
It’s starting to get mad cold outside, everyone is starting to wear their jackets to school and stuff, gets annoying though. Because when it cold outside no matter how much the air conditioning is on inside, its always to warm. Then your stuck with your jacket and you don’t want to wear it but you also don’t want to carry it. So you decide to shove it in your bag, but then your bag just looks massive. Mr. Fink by the way, you’re my role model.

So hear we are almost at the halfway marker of our first semester hear at Baruch. This class is the shit by the way, really chilled kids in this class. My friend was telling me how much he hates all the kids in his block. I honestly don’t have one negative thing to say about any of you guys, hope same goes for me.

Living life is living the way we want to and only taking into account others as a supplement of our actions. I know that life is real when I get to do the things I want to do, laughing at the jokes in life and loving every moment I live. To me, Love conquerors all and it’s my driving passion to achieve. Love is like my personal kind of drug. It makes me do things I normally wouldn’t do and continue to live on through all walks of life. Love is probably the best invention of voluntary motivation to do anything and everything that comes along. Therefore, the most important people in my life are the people that I love. That includes my family, my friends and my boyfriend because they give me a purpose in life. They give me a reason to strive for the right things and a reason to laugh. These people are the meaning of life and the checkpoint of my reality. They are the most real that real can get.

However, I am far from personal satisfaction, of course I realize there are aspects in my life I can improve on or even just have to deal with. I dislike how I am short. I dislike how I worry too much. I dislike the idea of not living up to parental expectations. The list is basically endless, but one thing I did learn is to be optimistic. Whatever the situation may be or however bad it gets, I know it can get better. I know life moves on and this is only an instance or that there would always be compensation. I always look for the light at the end of a long dark tunnel. So, my optimism allows me to live through any situation and bring light to others as well.

Bringing light to others is important to me. I believe happiness is a result of social interactions. By caring for others, others care for me. One thing I fear is being alone, having nobody to share life with. Loneliness makes me detached from others and every situation in life harder to bear. I’m needless to say a social person and live for the interactions between people. Another fear of mine is not living life to the fullest, by growing up too fast. I don’t want to go through the motions of life and miss out on the small things that makes life enjoyable. Its easy to pass by life on autopilot, going to school, getting married, having a family and growing old; but it’s the times in between that constitutes life. Life is not about just being in it, but being a part of it. I go on in my life to, not only be something, but to do something.