Author Archives: ivan.chen

My first semester at Baruch has been a roller-coaster ride. Somethings were good, some were bad. I liked some professors and some not so much. But I have experienced a world much different from high school. I never would have thought that college would be so different than the life I had been accustomed to.

Baruch has lived up to my expectations since I knew how diverse it was. Everyday I see new people and even people from different cultures and even continents. This helps me build social relations with different people and to get a better understanding of the world out the United States. Three day weekends really are great as I have time to hang out with friends and do my own hobbies. Choosing classes for yourself is also a good thing and being able to drop. I was pretty relieved that college wasn’t all about papers and tests, like I had heard from many people attending college.

Although college hasn’t been everything I wanted. It has not lived up to my expectations in the categories of lateness, getting to class, and how crowded it was. First, many professors don’t accept lateness, but many times lateness is caused by problems such as train delays, things we can’t control. I feel like we shouldn’t be accountable under these circumstances, but I do understand where professors are coming from. Another thing that failed my expectations was the elevators, most of the time they are always crowded and you’ll have to wait a while to use one. Also, most times people won’t hold the elevator for you when you are sprinting to get into one. It also wouldn’t be so bad if the escalators worked for a change. I really didn’t like that the door to freshman seminar was next to the broken escalator, as many people would use it and it would be pretty hard to enter the freshman room. Finally, the school it so crowded with many students, I didn’t expect there to be so many students. Usually during breaks there is no where to sit for lunch and the gym and computer labs are usually always full.

College has exceeded my expectations in the fact that most professors were pretty nice, nothing like what people had described them to be. They actually care about students and want them to succeed. In addition, I liked how there were so many clubs, one for everyone, and you even could make your own. Not to mention there are many programs to help students and to enhance student life. I also liked freshman seminar since it helped me think/enlighten me about college. I learned things such as how to make a schedule, requirements, and areas of the school such as the writing center. I also got very close to people in the seminar and I was very lucky to have it. I was also glad when we were told not to click drop classes when making a schedule on esims, since you would have to pay if you did. I’m pretty sure most of us would have done that so props to Toby Joseph.

My semester has gone pretty well at Baruch. Although I did have to drop a class, cause I wasn’t doing so well. This semester I’m getting mostly B’s. Though I didn’t really enjoy some of the classes. The experiences have been fun and club fairs were pretty nice. But there have been some bad moments such as I still don’t really know what I want to do, mainly what to major in. And paying bills for college and life away from parents is an intensive task. I think that the semester was pretty good since I was still getting used to college and adapting. I think my experiences are going to get better, but also harder at the same time since I’ve heard that freshman year is usually the easiest. But I can’t be for certain since I didn’t get most of the professors/classes I wanted while making my schedule. Getting the leftover classes after everyone else was done just really sucked and messed up any plans for a schedule.

The first thing I would have done differently would have been to drop classes that I knew I would come to loathe in the beginning of the semester and not have to suffer. If I could do anything differently during the 1st semester I probably would have studied harder and been more involved with class. I should not have saved work for the last minute and procrastinated. I would also have participated more in class and ask questions to get info on things I didn’t know and to get myself thinking.

To tell you the truth, I don’t think I have changed too much. I’m still the procrastinator and sleep lover I was in high school. Although I have skipped 1 or 2 classes, which is something I had never done previously in high school. But I do now understand that in order to succeed in life you have to work hard and that is what college has taught me.