PR 3B

So when i went to the career advisement center it was actually very helpful. I told them what my interests are and what i plan to do with my life. I told them i am a dancer with plans to become professionally and continue with this career. So they asked what are you looking for in baruch i basically said that i want to get a degree as a backup just in case any misfortune or injury would happen to me and i wouldnt be able to dance. And i told her that i was looking for a major in investments because 1. i am interested in stocks and 2. I plan to open my own studio one day and i want to make sure i am investing my money well. They told me basically the list of classes i should take which consist of many business courses. They also said that the ideas are very realistic and if you would like to open a studio one day you can do it but only if you put yourself fully into it. I felt that the encouragement helped and they were really nice. I will plan to take these courses in the future 🙂

So… i went to the meeting at the baruch conference center and i wasnt quite sure what it was about. I came in they gave me a name tag and looked like the place was filled with juniors and sophomores. I didnt know anyone. So we did introductions and when i got my name tag it said my name is… and im gay. And i right away knew this was going to be an uncomfortable session. My view about gay people is whatever you can do your thing but when it if there would be a gay trying to hit on me i would be pretty damn uncomfortable. Or if he got too close to me i might just hurt him. I have nothing against people that wanna be gay like whatever if thats ur thing then good for you but if someone gives me at tag saying my name is and im gay. that is not coool. So with all due respect to the gay its just not my type of thing to even fake an identity that im gay. In my culture it is offensive to be gay and i through culture feel uncofortable talking about it. So i would call myself neutral about the topic. So anyway the discussion was about gay people and i was simply quite neurtral.

The first semester at Baruch has been….insane. Baruch has neither lived up to my expectations or not lived up to my expectations. It’s just a college. The classes have been hard, the professors have been frustrating and the homework has been annoying. However, I have to say that Baruch is actually alright. I’ve met some great people and it’s been fun going though the first semester of college with these people. A large part of this semester has been just surviving. I have to say, all nighters have been very common and sleep has been something rare and sooooo appreciated. Also, coffee is my new best friend. If I could have done something differently, I would have worked even harder by studying more and trying to stay awake during classes. I think a huge problem I had for this semester was just staying awake….Sorry professors!! Anyway, I don’t think I’ve changed, but if I have, I can’t wait until my friends from home see me. It’s sad to think that we’re all splitting up after this semester is over, so I just want to say that it has been a blast. =]

Well I think that it would be appropriate that i start off by saying that the semester didnt turn out quite as I, or probably close to any incoming freshman thought it would be. I knew it was going to be alot of hard work but  its not even the work. It’s all of us not only going into college but already starting our lives which includes athletic careers, outside responsibilities and work. I for one needed to work a lot because i support myself and my dancing career almost entirely and dancing is a very expensive career. I am not complaining that i need to work for the things I want to pursue, i think it is only fair; I am just still grateful my parents are able to pay for my education still and that i don’t have to pay for rent while living with them still. All of these responsibilities that i have put on top of everything made it really hard for me this year to handle it all and i believe that is why this year has been so tough on me.

I have set up my schedule now though and i have been looking forward to this day for a while now because i knew if i could set up my own schedule it would help ease my day enormously. When the day came to register I had everything planned with classes that i would take course codes and everything. I even had atleast one backup course incase the main one i wanted to take was already closed. It turned out out of my 5 classes i only got 1 of the classes i wanted!! Even the backups were full! So as quickly as possible i tried to set up a whole new schedule for myself and it took me about a whole hour and a half…. Luckily i ended up making myself a descent schedule with descent professors as according to ratemyprofessor.com. I don’t have class fridays and the latest i leave school is mondays and Wednesdays at 230. Otherwise i leave at 1225 and i am just grateful for that. It should make my day much easier to handle with work, practice, and homework everyday.

So to sum it all up my experience at Baruch was not bad, but i do have to say i expected better. I expected some good parties more socialization and i though it would be quite easy as long as I focus. Well it hit me that it is a commuter school so it will not be like the dorming experience with the parties and socialization and it was not that easy for me to focus on school when i had so much going on outside of school. So I am not hating on Baruch i’m just really happy the semester is coming to an end b/c i really need a break!

-Marek Klepadlo

Mon dieu. This is going to sound horrible, but Baruch College really hasn’t lived up to my expectations. The first time I came to Baruch was in November of 2009 for Baruch’s Student for a Day Program. All of the people were beyond friendly, there was (GOOD) free food as far as the eye could see and when we went to “class,” the classrooms were clean, seemingly new and had a bunch of pretty cool electronic stuff. None of what I’ve experienced as a student here comes even close to what I saw that day. A lot of people at Baruch are really douche-y, the food is mediocre and costs 4793274234872903847238 dollars and the nice classrooms from when I went to Student for a Day are all up on like the 14th floor or something, where I don’t have any classes. Baruch’s Student for a Day Program totally bamboozled me, so no, Baruch definitely has not lived up to my expectations.

I think my semester was okay though. I dropped pre-calc. I think I’m doing phenomenal in History and Psychology. I’m averaging a B- in English right now and a B in Communications. So it’s all ~aiight~.

If I could do this semester all differently, I would have dropped Maths sooner. It wasted a lot of my time and energy. Maths class was pretty late in the day, so I was always tired and couldn’t learn anything, not to mention the couple of hours I had to wait each day for Maths to start totally destroyed me.

I think I’ve changed a lot since I started at Baruch. I’m a lot more cynical and angry and a lot less naïve. I entered Baruch desperately trying to keep a hold of my childhood and not wanting to grow up. Before I could even realize what had happened to me, I’d matured. I’m everything that I promised myself I’d never become–an adult. I have responsibilities now, and no time to do anything I want. I’m convinced that everyone around me has the worst intentions. Just months ago I could see the world through a child’s eyes. When I wasn’t thinking like a 5-year-old, I was thinking like a 17-year-old. It was like a switch I could turn on and off. (Guess which one was more fun, hahah.) It gets harder to keep in touch with my inner child the more Baruch infects me.

tl;dr Baruch has pulled a Unit 731 (no offense to anyone) on my life, but whatever. C’est la vie, ouais?

“Gay people? I have no problem with them. As long as they don’t touch me, I’m good.” A bit contradictive, isn’t it?

There was a wide panel of discussions being held at the Newman Conference Center (yes, I forgot the date) but the one that particularly caught my eye was the LGBT one, probably because the others seemed a tad boring and nothing worth writing about. What seemed to be the least boring panel discussion turned out to be something worth much more.

When Dajelyn and I first stepped foot in the room, it was a bit awkward because well, we were pretty much the only freshmen there. There was one senior and one junior. The rest of the group was professional adults with outstanding credentials that ranged from vice president of the arts department to the president of an LGBT-related club. So, when it was my turn to introduce myself, I said the only thing I could think of, “My name’s Bianca and I’m only a freshman so I don’t have any particular amazing credentials like you guys.” Everyone laughed so the atmosphere around the room was undoubtedly friendly.

The spokesman, Ryan, handed each of us a nametag and on it, he asked us to write the following; “Hello, my name is ________________ and I’m gay.” Once he said that, Dajelyn and I looked at each other, grinned, and said, “Cool!” I have to say, we were pretty naïve at that point. The fact of the matter is, both her and I love gay people. But until the end of the meeting, we never really knew how things are like for a gay person. At the discussion, we learned that there are many things in life everyone does that may seem offensive to them, little things such as the most widely used phrase, “That’s so gay.”

“How was the test?”

“Ugh, it was so gay.”

“Man, I gotta do this gay-ass homework.”

Honestly, those phrases don’t even make sense. How can you associate your homework with homosexuality? And even if you do, then you’re only using the term “gay” in a negative sense. If we could use “that’s so gay”, why can’t we use “that’s so straight”? Now it definitely sounds like it doesn’t make any sense. Well, neither is “that’s so gay”. So please, try to refrain from using this phrase.

Ryan then went on to discuss something new that Baruch would be doing about all this; a Safe Zone. Eventually, we will all see posters of a rainbow-colored Bearcat paw and in it describes the purpose of Safe Zone. It is the one place where LGBT members are not judged at all and can be themselves. The goal of Safe Zone is to make the entire Baruch campus one because unfortunately, according to statistics, only approximately 24% of the student body says they’re comfortable with LGBT related issues.

I’m really glad I came to this panel because it made me realize that there aren’t enough people that understand what being LGBT really is and how they can suffer from things like being bullied, receiving death threats, or being social outcasts. Take a look at Tyler Clementi. All this simply because someone happens to be sexually attracted to someone else of the same sex? That’s ridiculous. Everyone wants love and that special person they want to spend the rest of their lives with. LGBT members are no different. Love knows no boundaries and it definitely doesn’t determine gender. Take a look at Ellen Degeneres and Portia de Rossi. They are the perfect example of a beautiful gay couple absolutely head over heels in love with each other. It is couples like them that have people realize that there is absolutely nothing wrong with being gay.

This panel has definitely opened up my eyes to LGBT related issues and I hope that soon, Safe Zones will be available in every single corner of the Baruch campus.

When I first walked in through the doors of Baruch, I knew that it wasn’t gonna be easy. It’s college; what do you expect? Though it’s definitely not your typical college life away from home, it’s still a college; an institution of higher learning and with it comes work. Baruch College definitely lived up to my expectations in terms of workload.
Honestly, my first semester didn’t go as well as I’d planned. Time management is definitely one of my weak points and this semester only further proved it. School, work, swimming, and family. It doesn’t sound much, but it definitely took a lot out of me. I had two jobs; one in which my shifts were 10-12 hours a day (is that even legal?) I guess that was my main problem. I was working too much. School kind of became second, to the point where the workload just kept piling up and I was procrastinating on every single assignment and struggling to even keep up with it all. On average, I would get about 4 hours of sleep a night. I was always exhausted. I didn’t even have time for swimming, which is something I absolutely love but then lost interest in. And if that wasn’t enough, I had some family issues that had to be dealt with that also took up a majority of my time. At that point, my life was work, family, school, swimming. Something was wrong with that order.
If I could redo it all, I would quit my job sooner and maintain the one job that had more flexible hours. That way, I wouldn’t be as tired and I would’ve had time to go to practice and instead of getting back in shape around this time, I would probably be aiming to break records. After quitting my job, life is definitely back to normal; school, swimming, work, friends & family. That’s how an student-athlete’s college life should be and thanks to the athletes’ pre-registration privilege, I am happy to say that I can’t wait to start classes in the Spring because I got to pick the classes that I want to take with a pretty decent schedule to match =)
I gotta say, I think I’ve grown more mature since I started college. It may have only been one semester but I guess with all the stress I went through, high school felt like ages ago. When I take the train back home, I pass my high school stop. As I watch the students get on the train, all grouped together in noisy cliques, I literally feel like they’re still just kids, seniors who are complaining about college applications. Despite the fact that I went through it and I understand the stress and difficulty of it all, I feel it’s nothing compared to what I had to do in my first semester of college. I always think, “Wait til you get to college, guys. Enjoy high school life.”

My name is Danny. I’m 18 and I’m from Hewlett out in Long Island. Beforei came here, i had many worries about how to commute, how hard the work would be, and even if I could make friends. These were only a few of my concerns and now that I’ve been here for two months, I see that it is a big transition from High School. The work load is about the same but time management is different. The atmosphere is more open and less restricting and as a result, unlike high school, there is a chance that you might end up start fooling around or roaming the street with a friend. Besides a little problems here and there, college is a new experience something you could get used to. The freedom, the new teachers, and the people one meets is different than high school and in some ways, its good.

I thought college was supposed to be a place where you are given the opportunity to learn and figure out what one wants to do in the future. Well for me, again it turns for the worse. Not only did I have a bunch of problems early on in the semester, now the registrars are telling me to take a lower level english class to meet my requirements. 1) Its bullshit them telling me to take 2100 when THEY had placed me in 2850. This was the reason why I went through all the hassle in the beginning of the semester! 2) It prevented me from registering for a couple of the required classes…. 3) Showed me what an irresponsible staff Baruch has. I am pretty sure I am not the only one whos had this much trouble here at Baruch. During freshman orientation, two others were complaining about how the Baruch staff weren’t helpful at all. Back then I wondered to myself why but now I see the reality. Baruch has been a disaster and I can’t wait to get out.

On the other hand, my first semester at Baruch wasn’t too bad, grade-wise. I could have been a little more studious and managed my time better. Having my old habits of cramming last day really hurt me. It will definitely be a lesson to me for the short future.

If I could do something differently my first semester here at Baruch would have been to get to the root of all my problems from the start. One problem led to another and now, I’m in deep shit. Putting such little importance on this problem not only ruined my second semester, but also put me in a lot of stress.

From Baruch, I learned to only count on myself and not anyone else: not the teacher, not other students and definitely not the unprofessional staff. I will just say that if I had learned anything at Baruch is that college really sucks and screws up ones future’s plans if transcripts either gets lost or never put through, like me. Baruch has not only put me in a hell-hole, but now gave me the picture that all cheap schools are bad. “You get what you pay for.” Here I paid $600 compared to $20,000, and now im taking 2 classes in the second semester.

A) My first semester at Baruch pretty much reached my expectations. I came in hoping I would meet some cool new people and figure out what I want to major in. At first, I hated Baruch. But after about a month, I settled in, met some nice new people and finally decided what I probably want to do with my life.

B) My first semester went okay. I had to drop pre-calc which I wasn’t expected, but at least now I am taking math 2160 next semester because I want to major in journalism. Overall I’m doing okay in every class. I just need to make sure I do well on my finals, especially History.

C) If I had to live my first semester over I guess I would try and take some of my history quizzes more seriously, but other than that I don’t think I would change anything. Whats done is done.

D) Since I started baruch I would say I have become more independent, But Its hard to notice if I really changed in Baruch because I have changed so much in the past year in general that I can’t tell If I’m still changing more.  But at the same time, I guess we’re always changing.