Hey everyone, I’m Rong Jie (Jacky) Zheng. For those of you who know Chinese, my Chinese name is 郑荣杰. I was born and raised in China until the age of 3, which was when I immigrated to the United States of America. Most people say I’m a FOB, but I’ve been here for 15 years already. I guess this is the result of hanging out with mostly ABC’s, because I’ll always be a FOB in their point of view. However, most FOB’s think I’m an ABC. I play a lot of sports, especially table tennis and handball. I started playing table tennis in 5th grade and handball in 8th grade, so I’m very confident when playing these sports.
My top 3 concerns about my freshman year at Baruch College are: getting a high GPA, attending Golden Key, and enjoying this year. Like everyone else, I want to get a 4.0 GPA. I understand this is really difficult, so I won’t be surprised if I don’t get it. Nonetheless, I’ll try my best and hope to achieve at least a 3.5 GPA. My friend is currently the president of Golden Key, and I decided to join it with some friends. However, my friends and I went to give in our contracts for work study during Golden Key’s 1st meeting, so we actually ended up not making it. I deeply regret missing the meeting, and I’ve promised myself to be there whenever Golden Key has other meetings in the future. Overall, I want to enjoy my freshman year in college as much as I possibly can. I know this year is supposedly the easiest, and the school years ahead of me only get harder as they progress.
So far, I think studying will make my Baruch College experience different from my high school experience. In the orientation, I heard the amount of time students spend on studying is double the amount of time they spend on learning in classes. For instance, I have this English professor who gives daily quizzes for the assigned readings. I admit I’m a slow reader and can’t read unless there’s absolute silence. This is most likely due to the fact that I prefer not to read, but I read anyway as part of my homework. Therefore, it takes me a while to finish the assigned readings. Furthermore, I tend to go on SparkNotes and read the summaries there just to check if I missed out on anything important.
I think my first year at Baruch College will change me by having me be way more independent. I used to be so dependent upon others. This is probably due to me having no siblings, so I usually treat my best friends as my own siblings and rely on them instead. I’ve gotten somewhat more independent after college started not too long ago. I say this, because I had to buy the textbooks required for my classes, whereas I was always used to going together with my classmates to borrow them back in high school.
