Category Archives: Blog Post 1

“When one fails at life, he is no better than a house pet.” That’s the story of my existence so far, as my apathetic personality would be indicative of. What makes a person? What indicates a man to be socially successful? General consensus would be having a good education, a good job, and a steady income. Well things don’t always go according to plan, as evident by my current situation. My name is Mike Zhou, I was born in Queens, NY. I am apathetic, lazy, unmotivated, and an overall bum. Personal interests include: sleeping, eating, drinking, and more sleeping, with the occasional playing of a video game from 1996 to pass the time.

I really don’t know why I am this way, just the above descriptions  become clear fact whenever I am tasked or am required to do… well, pretty much anything. Take out the trash? Sure no problem, I’ll get to it when its full(by full I mean overflowing). Help me carry these things? No, you shouldn’t have bought so much stuff. Run these errands? Do you really expect me to do all these things for you? I would rather spend my time sleeping, do it yourself you lazy bum(what irony). Of course, this exemplifies me as “a bad friend, a terrible student, a failure of a son, and a worthless person.” Which I have no argument against, because it is in fact, all true. Well its not that bad actually, because you get low expectations from others, so you never are below standard.

Fun fact: I was sent to military school. Potentially to fix myself, which it did help a bit. I was there for 4 years, and of course, when thrown into the proverbial room without an exit, I had to adjust myself. Though I would have to admit, I learned some neat things that shall remain undisclosed during my time there. Of course, I did end up just learning how to cheat the system, along with my roommate during senior year. We performed the literal bare minimum of what we had to do to get by, even though we were battalion staff officers somehow. Morning formation at 7:00AM – 2 guys are seen casually walking out of their dorm at 6:58. Of course, once out of military school, I just resumed my normal pre-military school life as if nothing happened. In fact, it would seem it had a reverse effect, as I just wanted to do nothing to make up for the time I was forced to do things there. I ended up dropping out of Stony Brook a month into the first semester- my motivational problems arise again. Well I’m back in school now though, I guess that counts for something?

Hmmm….Concerns I have about college? Well yeah of course; every freshman has their worries about their post high school education.  Will I find a good group of friends for the upcoming years at this commuters’ school? Will I have a fun social life even though I have a two hour long commute to make twice a day?  Will I keep my grades up now that I’ve begun the next step in my life? These are all my biggest worries about college.

In high school, I had the greatest group of friends anyone can ask for.  All of us guys have been in the same classes for years, we all had fun going out every weekend, we all had jobs, we all dated girls at the same time, we all played sports and we all had high grades.  It’s worrisome to me that they all are in big time universities or med schools, while I’m still living at home.  I’m too old to whine about it, so I intend to make the best of my situation.

A social life is important to me.  It’s difficult going FROM a lifestyle of floating through school easily getting good grades and partying TO a lifestyle of having to study every night and going to sleep when I finally get home each night.  I spent my first couple of weeks of school this year working every day I had off from class.  I cut my hours down to working only Sundays hoping to lower my workload.  Now with my free time, I get to go on Facebook to see pictures and comments about how fun all my friends are having in college.  Usually I’m not the envious type BUTTTTT…..what can I say, I messed up.

High school came easy for me.  I rarely studied.  My study habits basically went like this:

1)      “O crap……we have a test tomorrow?”

2)      Stay up and cram for a test the night before

3)      Wake up

4)      Ace the test

Even with all the AP and CollegeNow classes I took, I still graduated with a 97 GPA.  I spent the last few months of high school realizing how this is not a good way to start college.  I knew that college matters more than high school and I thought that understanding that doing well in college will land me a better job was enough motivation for me to actually do work and study.  Procrastination is my evil best friend.  I save everything for the last minute and it will be my inevitable downfall one day.  Even right now, I’m rushing to finish this blog.  By the way, whoever gave us this very purposeful assignment….GREAT IDEA!

Now what is the difference between high school and Baruch College?  Well for me, I consider Baruch College to be a 13^th grade.  I hope nobody takes that the wrong way.  Just my opinion.  Not much of a difference.  I still live at home.  I have to ask my parents to go out.  I still get yelled at by my neighbors for driving too fast.  I still have to cut the grass.  My mom still comes in my room every morning before she wakes up to give me a kiss (Awwww!….yes I know), I still hang out with kids in high school, and I still take classes similar to the ones I took in college.  One thing I despise about this school is how we have to take general classes our first two years.  Like seriously? WHY? TO BE WELL ROUNDED? I know I want to be a business major.  I didn’t come to this school to be an astrophysicist.  Taking all these pointless classes isn’t really helping me pursue my dream job.  How is Music in Civilization going to provide any benefit for me in life? No offense Professor (I actually enjoy sitting her class), but is identifying a piece of music to be homophonic or monophonic actually important? WHO CARES? I can already tell when there is one person singing or if there is more than one instrument playing two different melodies without needing to take a full semester long class about it.  Fact of the matter is that I took way more CollegeNow business oriented classes in high school than I am now.

 I am Mindy, and I’m came from China when I was quite little. I stayed in United States for a bit over ten years. Even though I have been here for so long, I can never quite grasp the concept of grammar. I hope I can continue to improve it, along with my vocabulary. Over the years, I met a lot of good friends, and I plan to meet more in Baruch.

During the last year in high school, my friends and I were all excited about college life. We were all going to different schools and knew how hard it would be to keep in touch, especially since one of us going to a state across the country. Well keeping in touch isn’t as hard as it was back in the days, however everyone has to work to keep in touch. If there is only one person trying to keep everyone together it would not work. The perfect example was what happened to my middle school friends. The rest of us are staying in New York, but so far we’ve all been busy to meet up. Sometime around Thanksgiving my friend in Washington will come back for homecoming.

Even though we all went to different colleges, we all agreed on three things. One is that we have a lot of reading to do, second is that books are very expensive and that college isn’t as different from high school as we thought (except with a larger range of age for the students). For me; however; I didn’t take the subway to high school, but now I have to take it everyday. At first I was scared of getting lost; my friends said that I would be an idiot if I managed to get lost in the subway. Taking the subway takes the same amount of time as getting to high school.

As the year goes by, I begin to wonder how I will change. I also wonder whether I will grow a bit. My mom always says “You think you will still grow?…hahaha…” ;o;. But seeing how even a caterpillar needs time to become a butterfly, I will slowly change through out college. I hope I will be able to study better, and manage my time better. Entering college as a caterpillar, and transforming into a butterfly throughout college.

      My name is Lan. I came to New York for several years. After i attended High School, i found out that teachers are not very strict, because Chinese teachers are way harsher on students work. But college life in America is more rigid than college life in China. College students of China can graduate college very easily; they even have a second chance if failed the test. This is an totally opposite situation in America.

I already had three quizzes during this first month. The homework that professors gave us is mostly reading material. It’s not like High School which teacher gives you homework every day. In college, it’s all depends on yourself. You can decide whether you read it or not, but the grade you can get on the test is greatly affect by how much work you have done. The only class I have to write essay during High School is English, but I probably have to write paper for almost every class in Baruch. This is the first thing I realized when I saw the syllabus, because writing is always been my weakness. Another difference is that there is more time to manage by myself. I only have four days school and two of them are 2:30PM to 5:30PM, so I’m trying to find a part-time job to spend the extra time. After all, college means growing up.

To be honest, I don’t want to grow up. Childhood is fun and careless, but the responsibility increases as you become older. There are many things to worried for now which are handled by your parents when you are young. After this first year of college, I think the crucial change of my life is becoming more responsible, self-disciplined and self-conscious. During my past 18 years, my life is mostly arranged by my parents, so I don’t have to worry that much. After the experience in college, responsibility is going to be the most important thing I learned. Lack of self-discipline is my defect. I couldn’t go to bed before 2 o’clock during the weekend and always wait for the last minute to do my work. I think the environment of college could change my defect because I need to be self-disciplined in order to be success. In truth, I don’t have a specific goal in my life, so life is aimless to me. Education is not only about learning skills but also is a way to be self-conscious. This is the reason I think education is necessary to people, and maybe I can find my own goal after freshman year.

Even though this is only the first month of the freshman year, I know college is not like High School. I hope after this year is over, I could say “I’ve done my best during this year.”

In my opinion the question “Who Do You Think You Are?” is really meaningless, because the person who is sitting here and writing this blog is just me. Whatever I think shows how I interpret different things, whatever I do shows how I solve problems, and whatever I perform decides how people look at me.

I think I am just the person I am.

Now, as a college student, there are three top concerns about my freshman year at Baruch College.

Firstly, I have to develop self-study skill. When I was in high school, teachers usually taught us everything we supposed to know and summarized it for us, which made me spend just a little time to study at home. However at college, it’s on the opposite side. For every class, teacher assigns homework for us to read the next chapter on the text book. And then, on the next day, he just goes over the main idea with us and leaves everything else for us to figure out by ourselves instead of covering all of them. It forces me to spend a lot of time at home learning it by myself, which I would never have to do in high school. Therefore a self-study skill is very necessary at college, and I have to develop it as soon as possible.

Secondly, I have to develop my own social network. As a business student, although I need to study hard on my courses, it doesn’t mean I have to be a nerd. I should participate in many clubs and act energetically to make a lot of friends using my free time. Because when I graduate from college, get into the society and start my business, I need friends to help me in many different ways. For work, we can either share some information or corporate to do a project; for private, we can either hang out to relax ourselves or solve some personal problems if we need. Therefore I need to figure out the way of making friends and develop my own network.

Thirdly, I have to develop my time management skills. I am the kind of person who really knows how to waste time. I can spend whole day watching movies, chatting with my friends, or just lying on my bed without thinking anything. Then at the end of that day when I am ready to sleep, I feel so sorry about losing another day and hope I can get tomorrow fully used. But guess what? The same thing happens again on the next day. Therefore I always feel so stress out when there comes the deadline of some homework or project that is really important for the class. I have to change this situation right now, because if I keep doing this, I will definitely fail all my classes and harm my future plans.

I, a freshman at Baruch college, with three top concerns in mind, hope to change myself into a better way for my future.

My name is Jake Kuhl, I am seventeen years old and live in the Bronx. I went to public school from pre-k to the eight grade. I was the valedictorian in the fifth grade and entered a specialized school program in the middle school I.S. 192. There I took high school courses in the seventh and eight grade and graduated with high school credit by passing several regents. I then attended Cardinal Spellman High school, a Catholic school in the Bronx. My education
has greatly affected who I think I am. I have developed many of my beliefs  through my education. I have also had the luxury of experiencing both Public and Private education which has also helped given me a unique perspective on education systems in general and how they help mold you into who you are. My public education was enjoyable and my teachers were generally very good but I found that my Catholic school education has helped mold me into a better person and student as my public school education has provided me with a better understanding of math and science in particular. I believe I am generally a good person with a great work ethic that is also able to have a great time with friends and family. I have always prided myself in being able to do good in school consistently work part time and still have a busy social life. I am also someone who truely believes anyone can do whatever they want if they work hard and have patience and faith. I also love to play sports especially hockey. I have played hockey since I was 6 years old and won a high school championship in my Junior year. I am a little disappointed Baruch does not have a hockey team but I still play on the weekends for a local league. I had a lot of fun in high school but I think there will be some major differences in college. One of the big differences is the commute in the morning. In high school my mom worked close to the school so she would drop me off in the morning now I have take public transportation and it is about an hour and a half commute. Besides the commute I feel there is a lot more freedom in college and with that comes a lot more personal responsibility. It is nice to take less classes but now I feel there is a lot more for school you have to do outside the classroom as opposed to inside. So far there is also a lot more reading than in high school which I actually don’t mind because I would personally rather read than have to constantly be writing something for homework each night. Overall college is much diffident but I look forward to it and I feel I am going to have a good experience.

My teacher from high school had once said “A man who has never gone to school may steal from a freight car; but if he has a university education, he may steal the whole railroad”. I can assume that criminals would tell each other “don’t steal small, but steal big”. My intention of this quote is not to talk about the key to stealing but to express my main concerns regarding to my first year of college. College is where the painting of my future begins to be painted. Unlike high school, every year counts. The minute I stepped into Baruch, I gave myself 2 options: One is to do well by receiving at least a GPA of 3.3, and the other is to drop out. Of course, the option I have chosen is quite obvious. I am sure that I was ignorant like every other freshman. We believed that achieving the 3.3 average is simple. The first day of college caused me to rethink. The professors have already given me a glimpse of my college life.
My first concern is time management. Because professors are unaware about the work load we are responsible for, they continue to give out a great capacity of homework. Other than homework, we are also responsible for passing our exams. Homework is a “time consuming” activity that makes studying challenging. My second concern is adapting to the college environment. After spending 4 years in high school, transitioning from high school to college is difficult. The way the room numbers are label differ from how the rooms are organized in high school. My third concern is meeting new people. Baruch is a large building that holds over 1,000 people. This building consists of people of all ages. Due to the age gaps, I feel it is difficult to interact.
I expect to be more independent and mature. College provides obligations that are essential to fulfill. By doing so, I know that I continue to mature. Each and every day, I a given a challenge, fulfilling them allows me to feel a sense of achievement. Other than maturing, I expect to be more responsible. Ever since high school, I procrastinated and studied the day before the exam day. Cramming in college is unlike high school. The chance of passing in high school through cramming is 70%. Cramming in college can only guarantee a 40% chance of passing. As you can tell, the method that is used in high school can not be reused in college. This provides a greater challenge.

I am someone who is straightforward, for the most part. I can’t explain on the top of my head who I really am. As I’m writing this, I’m putting down whatever comes to mind about who I am. For some reason,  I feel as if I’m a contradiction. I could be a kiss-up or just plain stubborn, or that’s how I could be looked at. I don’t feel I am either because I have opinions, but I am not really stubborn about them as I usually have logic to back up my opinions. Aside from that, I am a go with the flow person. I’ve wanted to change that for a while now, but I’m so comfortable with it that it’s hard. One can say I’m cynical about certain things but I see them as logical. I wonder if one can call that stubborn? Aside from that, my hobbies lie on technology. I’m always using technology such as the laptop I’m writing on, smart phones, televisions, consoles etc. I use them and I try to understand them, such as how they work and how to improve them. I’m not exactly a tech junkie as I haven’t been doing such in depth studies nor do I take apart and reassemble. I would however like to further understand my knowledge for them. Through that my hobbies are basically video games and stuff, yeah I’m one of those people. My college life so far is just OK, nothing really extraordinary and I’m sure it’ll stay just OK for me. Last thing to note, I prefer critical thinking activities with high fun factor above others. I’m not sure whether I’ve told enough about myself, but I feel there would be too many unnecessary info.

I always hate writing about myself, it always reminds me of the adult equivalent of kindergarten when you drew a picture of yourself inside a sunflower to hang up on the wall underneath some stupid caption like, “kinder-GARDEN, growing together as friends”. Seriously though, if I was that important that everyone needed to know about me, there would be a biography in the works, but you know what? I’m kind of writing my biography as we speak, I can’t begin to explain myself to others, mainly because I’m just so unsure myself.  However, I can tell you I’m brutally honest, judgmental & have been called cynical (by my high school Physics teacher nonetheless, awesome). My dad actually offered to get me a bumper sticker once that says Italian attitude, Irish stubbornness, and Polish common sense, effortlessly summing up my stereotypical shortcomings into six words so everyone driving around me can be informed.  If you can manage to get past my humanly imperfections then you will be offered membership into the exclusive club of people that can kind of deal with me—i.e. my parents, because they have to; my dogs, because they don’t know any better; and my boyfriend, because he thinks I’m cute.

The biggest issue I’m going to face during college is most probably maintaining an acceptable GPA, but people have done it before, it’s not impossible.  Everyone seems to have the same problem, they have no friends and college is big and scary.  But the thing is, I don’t have a problem with being by myself while roaming the big, scary hallways; I’m independent & self-sustainable, but you can’t exactly invite independent & self-sustainable to your wedding in place of actual people.  I feel like everyone is Baruch is so serious all the time, I mean I understand business is no laughing matter, but I just want to run around making stupid faces in a juvenile attempt to make everyone laugh.  Maybe I’m too much of a sarcastic idiot and won’t actually cut it in the business world.  Maybe I just haven’t realized where exactly I belong yet and won’t know it until I get there.  Like I said before, everyone’s mainly concerned with making friends, but they seem to overlook the fact that we’re 18 years old and basically have the world at our feet.  Our lives can be shaped and molded into what we want it to be, but the problem is, how exactly do we want it to be?  Make it your own.

Hey what’s up? The name’s Sam. Hmm who do I think I am? That’s a good question because I honestly don’t know who I am as a person and at the moment I’m not really looking or I don’t really care pick one. My only concern for my freshman year is passing my class. Why I want to do this is just to make life easier. As for the differences between college and high school, I know that the work will be harder and some other stuff. My first year at college probably won’t change me and if it will I don’t really want to think about it because then I will probably try to resist it and I would rather wait and see what happens then guess and miss out on any of the possible futures that are possible. Well that’s all the questions they gave but I guess this blog could be considered lacking so here’s some random stuff that’s interesting. Well I had something interesting to say but I forgot it so here’s a rabbit that chases your cursor http://www.stumbleupon.com/su/1N3AI9/andrius.esu.lt/10/go2.htm

Hmm turns out I need more stuff to write about. Well it is a blog so I guess the important thing to do is to say what I think about things. First off let’s talk about the free writes in class. If it’s a free write why are they giving us something to write about, if it’s a free write then I should write about what I want to write about. So that’s what I did. Looks like I still have a lot of space to take up. The United States is going to hell in a handbag between the democrats being to cowardly to stand up to the republicans and do something to fix this country and the republicans doing everything they possibly can to screw up this country just so that Obama doesn’t get reelected. I have found that we as a country are screwed so I guess as soon as possible I’m getting the hell out of here.  But in the meantime here’s an awesome song by The Pharcyde http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OgXkwiM0hIQ&feature=relmfu

Thanks for reading this and If not then who cares.

Bye