Who are you? Describe yourself in 3 words. What do you want to do in the future? Oh how I hate these types of questions! I honestly don’t understand why we get asked them so often…perhaps it’s only to get us to start thinking about them? I hope so, because isn’t this the point in our lives where we’re just starting to figure out the answers? I mean come on, we’re only 18; how are we supposed to know what we want to do with the rest of our lives, or who we really are? Nonetheless, although I have yet to figure out who exactly I am, I do know this much:
My names Hannah McFadden and I was born and raised in Queens, NYC. I’m half Irish and half Egyptian…strange mix, I know, but I like it. Being brought up by two people with such contrasting ideals has really taught me a lot; however, it hasn’t exactly been easy. While my mother has always been very supportive of everything I do and everything I strive to do, my father, on the other hand, has in a sense tried to hold me back. His traditional Egyptian cultural worldview in conjunction with his inability to comprehend English well, has led him to misinterpret my character. As his eldest daughter, my sole role is to achieve academic excellence. Extracurricular activities hold no value and are viewed as distractions. Yet, they serve as the very medium for me to become the strong, outgoing woman I aspire to be. However, despite my father’s tenacious desire to have me conform to his strictly academic driven lifestyle, I’ve prevailed. To this day, I remain an exceptionally outgoing and social individual.
Since the age of six, I’ve been engaged in sports and several activities and programs that allowed me to meet and socialize with people of all ages and races. Thus, I’m very athletic and confident. I’ve played practically every sport competitively, however basketball has always been my favorite; I was captain of my both my high school’s varsity team and my travel team, and until the beginning of my junior year I wanted to play in college. But, that would be way too time consuming. Aside from sports, I’ve also always taken part in an array of clubs and activities that my school and community offered, such as student government, yearbook committee, female empowerment group, school newspaper and the Sarah Lawrence writing program, along with multiple community and service projects. I find great importance and joy in holding leadership roles, which is why I was Vice President of my Junior and Senior class in high School. However, even though it’s only been about a couple of months since I graduated High School, a lot had changed…for the worse.
Every day I think about how much I miss High School and therefore, Baruch is just not the college for me. I never intended come here; I was forced to due to the lack of financial aid my other schools offered me, and I think I’m still very resentful of that. The majority of my close friends have gone away to school, and for the first time in my life I feel a little alone. I mean, I still have my group of friends who stayed home, but I just hate living at home. And, unfortunately, I’ve come to realize that my negative attitude towards Baruch is really impacting my grades. I find that I’m not working as hard as I used to, and it’s really depressing. I’m extremely concerned about maintaining a high GPA, especially because I intend to transfer by the end of the year. I know I can do it, I just need to focus more and remind myself that going to a party when I have an essay to write isn’t the best idea. However, I’ve recently been thinking about a career in event planning and if that idea becomes more concrete, I believe I’ll stay at Baruch because it’s an exceptional business school and I would be saving ridiculous amounts of money.
