My name is Michael and I’m a student, son, brother, friend and musician. I’m pretty much just another person; I like jazz and basketball; I read books that have good reviews; and I love eating food. Throughout my life I’ve attended seven schools and lived in five states. Each of these places have shaped me in some way, be it camping in Arizona or mowing my lawn in Florida, or going to a performing arts school in New York City. The most important values I’ve from my experiences and from my family and friends are open-mindedness, hard work, perseverance and humor. Like most people, I often display contradictory characteristics, such as being smart/dumb and serious/ridiculous. Overall I’m a very driven person and I have a lot of confidence in my ability to get what I want.
The biggest concern for me this year is that it’ll be a fifth year of high school. Like Baruch, my high school had a vertical campus with escalators that never worked, and students who went home after classes. I didn’t really planned on going to a commuter school and was looking forward to dorm life, so having to take the train home everyday is kind of a disappointment. A couple other concerns are keeping track of all the work I have, and finding the motivation to do it. Most of my work so far has been readings and those don’t seem critically important to my grade right now. However I know that this attitude will catch up with me so I want to stay on top of things now. This concern is also related to the biggest difference I’ve observed so far. Unlike high school, the professors are a lot less concerned about making sure you know what’s going on with things like homework and assignments. Most of my professors seem to assume that we know what’s going on, when we don’t.
I honestly don’t know how I’ll change in the next year and it’s not something that I think about too much. For me, this year isn’t an opportunity to start over; I’m just going to keep doing what I’ve been doing and if there’s something I want to try then I’ll try it. I think that some of my classes could have an impact on how I see things. This semester I’m taking philosophy, sociology, and a writing class which is centered around A Lover’s Discourse. These classes will definitely present new ideas and ways of thinking. But how much they’ll change my current perspective on the world probably won’t be realized until the end of the year.
