Category Archives: Blog Post 2

Many people have faced different challenges and experienced different things when they are adapting a culture unlike their home culture. In my opinion, these experiences are the best proofs for my growth. The first turning point in my life occurred when I just came to America. The changes of school environment and educational model were the biggest challenge I was facing. I found that in American culture, students are not required to stand up to speak and to put their hands in their back; homework is much easier lesser than that in China; Students’ after-school life is so relaxed and the way of teaching is so different.

Although these differences brought me a great degree of comfort, this comfortable life almost dragged me into a self-enclosed life. Since the stressed Chinese learning environment was replaced by the relaxed American learning environment, I almost lost my urge for improvement. The change in life made me not so eager to learn new things and to make friends; I was pushing myself toward the pleasureless robot’s life. Gradually, I became very introverted and only talked to my several Chinese friends. Even after school, I rarely went out with my friends, but rather stayed at home addicted to computer games. Such distorted comfort stole everything from me, including my fighting spirit and goals.

This kind of life continued until I was in high school. In high school, its environment forced me to face and integrate into American society. Since that time, I have made some friendly and extroverted American friends and have gradually stepped out of my previous life. From them, I have learned the American ways of humor and life and have found the way of life I appreciated. I also have met some people who recently came to America just like me; some of them were very outstanding and motivated. Therefore, I frequently compared myself to them and used them as my goal. However, I have encountered a bottleneck: Even though I have tried my best, since I had wasted too much time on games, there was still a big gap between me and them. I knew that a good environment is so important for me, so I have tried hard to enter their social cycle. Over time, I have finally found my own way of life, which has become my second turning point in life.

From then on, I choose to exercise and to take part in volunteer work during my free time. Because of this, I gradually come to have a religion and become a Buddhist. At the Buddhist Temple, I have met many experienced people who have been giving me their greatest help. I begin to learn to accept and to integrate into American society, at the same time I find the right concept that would lead me to the next turning point in life. After the second turning point, I have reached a new level of understanding concept of life, which is not to afraid of facing any difficulty. I begin to understand that in order to become a successful person, I must understand my own value and become self-confident. I am grateful to those lonely and painful days, because their presences have helped to achieve who I am now.

Many people have faced different challenges and experienced different things when they are adapting a culture unlike their home culture. In my opinion, these experiences are the best proofs for my growth. The first turning point in my life occurred when I just came to America. The changes of school environment and educational model were the biggest challenge I was facing. I found that in American culture, students are not required to stand up to speak and to put their hands in their back; homework is much easier lesser than that in China; Students’ after-school life is so relaxed and the way of teaching is so different.

Although these differences brought me a great degree of comfort, this comfortable life almost dragged me into a self-enclosed life. Since the stressed Chinese learning environment was replaced by the relaxed American learning environment, I almost lost my urge for improvement. The change in life made me not so eager to learn new things and to make friends; I was pushing myself toward the pleasureless robot’s life. Gradually, I became very introverted and only talked to my several Chinese friends. Even after school, I rarely went out with my friends, but rather stayed at home addicted to computer games. Such distorted comfort stole everything from me, including my fighting spirit and goals.

This kind of life continued until I was in high school. In high school, its environment forced me to face and integrate into American society. Since that time, I have made some friendly and extroverted American friends and have gradually stepped out of my previous life. From them, I have learned the American ways of humor and life and have found the way of life I appreciated. I also have met some people who recently came to America just like me; some of them were very outstanding and motivated. Therefore, I frequently compared myself to them and used them as my goal. However, I have encountered a bottleneck: Even though I have tried my best, since I had wasted too much time on games, there was still a big gap between me and them. I knew that a good environment is so important for me, so I have tried hard to enter their social cycle. Over time, I have finally found my own way of life, which has become my second turning point in life.

From then on, I choose to exercise and to take part in volunteer work during my free time. Because of this, I gradually come to have a religion and become a Buddhist. At the Buddhist Temple, I have met many experienced people who have been giving me their greatest help. I begin to learn to accept and to integrate into American society, at the same time I find the right concept that would lead me to the next turning point in life. After the second turning point, I have reached a new level of understanding concept of life, which is not to afraid of facing any difficulty. I begin to understand that in order to become a successful person, I must understand my own value and become self-confident. I am grateful to those lonely and painful days, because their presences have helped to achieve who I am now.

Me and my cousin Ryan next to me, Adam on the arm.

Dear family,

Everything’s going well, I’ve been having a lot of fun with the freedom I receive of being out on my own. That being said, you guys were right about how difficult it is out here, when you’re running low on cash and can’t find a job; I don’t even want to know what I would be in for next if it weren’t for you guys. I know I can always count on you when I need to. Friends, lovers come and go, but family always stays. My roommate is awesome; we’ve helped each other out a ton since we’ve become friends. I figured gay or not, I might as well make friends with him. Turns out he’s not actually gay, he’s dating a friend of mine, and yes she is a girl. We’ve been spending a lot of money coming to and from Port Washington that we should’ve just bought a monthly ticket or something. He goes to a different school too, which I found strange since we’re rooming together, but I guess it’s a mix of all the schools; they really don’t care where you go. For me, Baruch is pretty difficult, especially the calculus class with the awful professor that I told you about the first week after I left. My favorite thing about college is the freedom that ensues. I finally moved out of my parents’ house, I can finally do what I want when I want and not get yelled at, and I can see whoever I want whenever I want without bothering anyone in the house. With all of these I have to remember how I got here, and I wouldn’t be here without the help of you guys.

Dad, you raised me strictly, but with a fun side. You were my private fitness instructor and my best friend. Someone I could ask at any point of the day to play ping-pong or videogames with me, someone that would make me dinner from time to time, and would be there when I hurt myself. To be completely honest, however; you were incredibly over the line strict with me and I hated that.

Mom, you were always the lenient parent, the one I would go to about going out or having people over. I always showed you the most affection for that; dad would never let me do anything. You were there when I hurt myself as well, remember the time I tried doing that really dumb trick on the bike? Yeah. You would also always play rummy with me and we got you into ping-pong as well. Remember when dad broke the lawn chair in the basement? Yeah.

Adam, my brother, you weren’t the best brother I could ask for but I am glad I have a sibling. I’ve seen only childs that wish they had any older sibling. You taught me Magic the Gathering and Yugioh.

Last but certainly not least, I have to thank my Uncle Jeff for putting me where I am today. I always loved him and his three sons, but once True Religion took off, we didn’t really talk much. Still I know you love me since you put me up for housing and my college tuition, maybe one day I’ll have the skills to run your business for you.

After I read the monologue posted by one of my classmates, Kun Chen, I was inspired something about the word “fate”.

First of all I must apologize to him because I usually made jokes on him for no reason. He seemed to never get mad about my behaviors. He was unique, intelligent, knowledgeable, I felt embarrassed for my disrespect to him. Sorry, my friend, actually I’ve discovered that I’ve learned lots of things from you, things that initially not belong to me.

Go back to my topic, I agree with a sentence written in Kun’s monologue, it said that “The world is a stage and every human is an actor or actress”. Playing a role in our lives seems unchangeable, it is like our fates, we have to do certain things, just for survival, make ourselves further away from death.

Why were we born? Why dose human reproduce? People think it is natural, it was the way of living since there was human being. Furthermore, why are we educated? Why do we find a job after graduation? What is it for? I don’t have to give those answer, everyone in the world should have known them already. We are all different people, but in some ways we are so similar, we were doing the same things since we were born, eventually we met each other here, we’ve became classmates, even friends. I believe that is my fate, my fate leads me to become what I am.

I don’t know whether my fate makes me a good person or not, I don’t believe god before, but now I’ve found one, which is my fate. My fate led me to write this monologue, to love someone, and to do the things coming up in the future.

My name is Intesar Ahmed, I was born on May 6^th 1993 and I live in Brooklyn. Hmmm. This is sounding more like an autobiography, any who; it has been an interesting one month in Baruch. No more teachers getting on your case because you are not showing up to class or that you are not doing well. More freedom and less written assignments, we have been given more control. But the question is what have I been doing with this new found freedom? Fooling around of course. Instead of studying or catching up on the reading that I didn’t do or even read stuff in advance, I have been spending most of the time in the game room. I suck at table tennis and the pool table is occupied all the time so I have been playing foosball every day during most of my breaks (and I still suck). In conclusion I hope to change myself and work harder and I hope college will help with this task and possibly I wish to also get better at foosball.

I believe life is a choice. Life can be different depending on what choices I make. I may make a wrong choices but I will not regret it. It is just another experience to take me one step closer to being an adult.

In everyday life, I make choices. In the morning, I chose to eat breakfast, which caused me to be late for the morning class. If I had chosen not to eat, I might have not been late to that class. During the lunch time, I made a choice to buy the salad instead of sushi. It tasted horrible. I couldn’t even finish the half of it. If I had chosen to buy the sushi instead, I might have eaten it all and be full. I don’t regret buying the salad though, because now I know that the salad taste horrible and I won’t ever buy it again.

I was hesitating about which school I should go between the Baruch College and Stony Brook University. Now this is a big choice because my life depends on it. I chose to come to Baruch College. I think I made the right choice. I enjoy being a Baruch student. I like my new friends I made here and the school. But who knows what could have happened if I chose to go to the Stony Brook University? It could have been better or worse.

I have made choices for my whole life. I am still making it. Tomorrow, I could make a choice that will bring me a big change. I just have to make sure that I am making the right choices.

I remember my first day of high school, energized and excited to meet my new classmates and teachers. Having been accepted into Bronx Science, my parents had high expectations of me and expected me to do well, pushing me harder in order to get me to complete my assignments and study for the tests so that I can be successful in school and in life. But where did I end up? After the first few months of high school I realized a truth about myself and I was forced into closing myself off from others and avoiding new friendships. Is this how I will pass my time in high school? The same daily routine everyday? Wake up, go to school, attend class, go home, go on the computer, and lastly going to sleep.

Here I am now, in college, hoping to further my education and get a job in the future. I wonder about my future every day, not knowing where I will end up, what will become of me, and wishing for something to happen that will totally change who I am. I hope that during my time in college, I will be able to find something of interest to me and attempt to pursue the goals that I may have.

I am not sure if someone else came up with this quote already or where it comes from but I felt in a sense that I do this sometimes. “When all else fails, try the unthinkable.” When I think if this, it kind of relates to “thinking outside the box” where you try to solve a problem by looking at it in another perspective or trying something you would normally believe to have not worked.

Because of my many insecurities, I am not able to see very far into my future and where I will end up, but instead, all I can think about is what is going to happen tomorrow and what are we going to do in class.

I am Austin Chung, born on May 4th, 1993, 18 years old. English is my first language and surprisingly my chinese is really poor. Because of the fact that I grew up in Brighton Beach which is filled with Russians, and that I was basically the only asian/chinese person in my school when i was young. The word “passion” means a strongly willed emotion towards something. I have passion for when it comes to billards or when it comes to my church. Ive been playing billards since my freshman year in high school so about 4 years and it is a big part of my life. Sure i play a lot of sports like basketball and handball, but i find billards to be the one activity that i truly put 100% focus in and that calms me down when i need to. I love the experience of going to a new pool hall and challenging new people i have never met before. So far in my whole life ive joined 3 tournaments and have won 3 tournments, 1 of them being from my own high school billards tournament. Billards also goes together with my church. In my freshman year in high school, i joined a summer school program for kids as a volunteer. Four years later i’m a head teacher in the children’s department and am still currently working there. I love working with kids. Besides working with the kids i go to church every sunday. I’ve become a soldier at my church which is another way of saying i was baptized. And ive even convinced my Lieutenant, in other words the man who owns the building, to add a pool table and ping pong tables on the 3rd floor at my church. So as of now, i am currently a full time student at Baruch College, work in the after-school program at my church after my classes end, work in the saturday program at my church, have responsibilities on sundays as my duty as a christian, and have the time to teach people tips and ways to practice how to become a better billards person at my church. School/Billards/Church. Thank you.