Category Archives: Blog Post 3

The first semester of college is coming to an end. From my experience, my first semester at Baruch College is very different from what I’ve expected. My initial goals and standards of myself at college did not follow through the first semester. I’ve set a list of things I should do and reach for in college, such as gaining a 3.5 GPA for an example. Before I’ve got into college, I heard stories from other college students that college is “fun”. What I thought of fun, it wasn’t the fun that they meant. College can be fun when you can manage to get the work done and have time for fun. But when I had a difficult time managing my time, it was no fun for me.

So far, I would have to say my first semester at Baruch College is not the worst or the best time of my life. For the classes, I realize that I had to put a lot more effect into studying than in High School. The pace of the lessons goes by in a blink of an eye. I realize that I had to put a lot more attention to the classes. Although my first semester of college may not be the best time of my life, but I’ve learned how to make it better in the next four years in college.

If I could do my first semester all over again, I think I would definitely change the way I study. In these few months, I realize that in college, memorizing the work isn’t the way to success, understanding the concept of the material is the most important part to learning. I use to memorize everything for the test, it works sometimes, but most of the time, I had to understand the concept in order to explain something clearly on my test.

College has changed me into someone who can keep up with tasks, and get work done effectively and efficiently. I think it is also the most important lesson that I’ve learned through college that would help me in the future in the real world.

The first semester is going to end in a month, I have gained much more than what I initially expected through the past thirteen weeks, not only academic knowledge but also new values to society.

Gain vs. Lost: first I received my class schedule, I was complaining that they assigned the exact same classmates to each of my courses. This was obviously going to limit our social network, and that would be boring to me. Last week everybody in my class made their new schedule for next semester, few of us have chances to meet again. Actually, we lost larger social networks, but gained deeper friendships.

Naïve vs. Mature: I was told that I was naïve, I was always acting like a kid when I already turned to eighteen. I do not know what makes me such a personality, honestly I hate being a kid. At the beginning of the semester, I wrote down “making people around me happy is one of my goals”. My statement was not false, but I used a wrong method to get it done. I made jokes to bring fun to others, like a clown in time square, surrounding by groups of kids. Now I discover that anytime we aim to accomplish something, there are usually multiple ways for options, to choose a naïve or mature way, it is up to ourselves. Most of time they both direct us to the destinations, but an unsuitable choice is making a bad experience.

Finally, never take a risk without evaluation to its consequence. Most of us are going to dedicate in business occupations, most of us are going to be entrepreneurs. Take a deliberation before getting started .

My first semester at Baruch is only a little bit more than a week away and man am i happy. College is pretty much what i expected it to bee, a lot of writing and reading assignments. I think i did pretty good this semester because i have been able to keep up with these assignments thanks in part to when i am at work lifeguarding all what i do is read anyway. Baruch has been what i thought it was going to be, school. It’s not to exciting  (althugh the protests were) and i really dont have time to get involved into any clubs since i work so much. But i kind of like it like that, it keeps me more focused on the reason im in college, to learn and get a degree as oppose to when im home having fun and being with my friends. I just cannot wait to have a month off to relax and worry only about work as oppose to school and work. I wouldn’t go back and change anything i did this semester because i think i did a good job and i have no regrets. I think this semester has changed me for the better. i have become a more responsible and independent person. I look foward to my month off and taking classes that i actually want next semester.

My bad its late i was going to do it last night but I spend the whole night watching a Herman Cain BLR soundbite http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uE5xZKszXMQ which is one of the most hilarious things I’ve ever seen. But anyway I’ve got somethings to cover before I start babbling on about random shit. Ight so the first question how has my experience at baruch lived up to my expectations blabbity blabbity blah blah blah? Well first off I knew exactly what to expect coming into baruch because this isn’t the first time I’ve been in college. I should be a transfer student but I didn’t know if my previous college grades would get me into a decent cuny and when I tried applying as a transfer I only had four choices instead of 6 and even if I had good enough grades to get into any of the 4 I didn’t have a choice the cuny system would choose for me, which is some bullshit. Right about now is the time when I would be saying pardon my language but fuck that you’re all old enough to know how to spell a curse and even if some kid did read this who’s to say he doesn’t already curse. I have a cousin in 3rd grade and he’s been cursing for at least a year which is some shit. But what are you going to do we live in an age when the best way to describe something so that everyone will understand is to curse. But I digress, one question done three to go. I messed up my first semester here. I didn’t get the textbook I needed right away so right off the bat I was behind and I didn’t start taking the one class I had seriously until I failed a test. So that’s awesome. Boom 2 questions done. The third can easily be assumed but I need to take up space anyway. So if I could do it again I would get the book and study my ass off from the beginning so I wouldn’t have to pay a tutor to help me out. But in my defense my teacher is some sort of Eastern European and I am shit with accents. I just can’t understand them. Plus I fall asleep in class. Ight 3 done one to go. How have I changed well I smoke marijuana much less often since I’ve started going here which is perfect because that is really what I wanted to do. Now not only can I focus more but I get like twice as high when I do smoke which is a win-win. Alright now that I answered all the questions, filled up as much space as I need, I can start babbling and ranting about shit. I was originally going to do a video blog it was going to be me talking over me playing the game Castle Crashers which is made by the people who made Alien Hominid which if anyone went on new grounds awhile back would agree that it is one of the best flash games ever created. Alright I’m over 500 words so I’m going to stop but before I do I would like anyone who reads this to please go to http://americancensorship.org/ and please join the cause because if this bill gets pass we will lose many freedoms we hold dear and we won’t be able to download anything off the internet and idk about you but I can’t afford all the music I like to listen to. Ight peace bitches

Time flies. When I
started to write this blog, I realized that it was already the end of my first
semester at Baruch College.  During the
past three months, there were a lot of things and new people bursting into my
life that either made me feel depressed, crazy, or made me feel impressed,
happy.

Before I attended
Baruch College, I expected that I would manage and divide my time perfectly
into three aspects: develop my social network, handle my school work and take
care of my personal life. However, since I didn’t develop an effective time
management skill, my whole plan messed up. During a limited period of time, I
could never get all the work of these three aspects done. For example, on
Saturday, I could only stay home, focus on my papers with a cup of coffee and a
McDonald’s No. 5 meal, without handing out with my friends or preparing a big
meal for myself. Similar things kept happening to me showed how my experience
had not lived up to my expectation.

On the other hand, I
really improved my reading skills, which was the experience that had lived
exceeded my expectation. I got a really poor reading skill before I attended
Baruch College. I had to spend a longer period of time either reading or interpreting
an article than others. However, after attending Baruch College, I realized
that the reading assignments I had to complete within one week were almost
equal to the quantity I had to complete within two months when I was in high
school. This situation forced me to really pay attention to my poor reading
skill, and develop it as soon as possible.

Overall, I think my
first semester at Baruch College deserves a B+. Even though there were many
things that had not lived up to my expectations, I still got some achievements
of certain areas under this new environment at college. If I could do my first
semester all again, I would definitely drop my philosophy class at the
beginning instead of being tortured by it for the whole semester, so that I
could use that huge amount of time to study something that was really
attractive for me, because philosophy was really a class that caused people
lots of time but only gave them few rewards.

I don’t think that I
have changed a lot since I started at Baruch College. As I know, I tended to
contribute more time on my school work and my social network; I started to
spend less time at home, and discuss fewer things with my parents. In a word, I
got more involved in college and became more independent at home. I’m not sure
if those changes are right, but I’m sure that they are the marks of my new life
at Baruch College.

Coming into Baruch on orientation day, I figured I would enjoy college about as much as I did high school—which is to say a vague appreciation of the institution as a whole, with less-than-enjoyable day-to-day operations. After a semester at Baruch, I would say that it has surpassed my expectations, but not by much. I love the freedom; that my free time does not revolve around school, but rather, classes. As lame as it is, I love the library and its many resources. My Philosophy teacher remarked today that she would feel less responsible if we had not turned in our papers or done our reading than she would have had she been teaching high school, and I love that I am in control of how well I do, and that in the end, it doesn’t affect anyone but myself.

I don’t love spending hours at a time waiting for my next class, but I don’t hate it either. I don’t love having so much time to myself. I hate spending money in the city. I like that my classes are straightforward, but I don’t like that I lose steam and begin to slack off halfway through. But overall, I did better than I expected to. At last, I broke the curse of losing motivation during the fall semester that seemed to haunt all four years of my high school experience. If I could go back, though, I would build up more resolve to do more than just get by in my classes. I would have involved myself in more activities, but there isn’t much I feel like I can’t capitalize on during the spring semester.

I think I changed a lot for the better since I started Baruch, but I compromised who I was a lot more than I wish I did. I focused a lot more on doing well and improving my behavior, but I kept quiet when I should have spoken up for the things I believed in; I wish I’d made a bigger impact on the people I’m surrounded by. I look forward to taking on more responsibility in the coming years, and excelling in whatever I invest myself into.

My first semester at Baruch College is about to end. I felt as if I haven’t changed much though. I still seem childish, and most of all I don’t seem 18 at all. I still like procrastinating, though I end up regretting it a lot later on. But after saying that, I would always get things done on time. I put my likes over the things I need to get done. I still enjoy playing online games, which my parents would often laugh at me about…They would always say that now I am 18 years old, I should act my age and stop playing these “little kid games.” Of course I would not reply to them, and I still play them.

This college has pretty much lived up to my expectations. There is a high diversity in the college, and I met some great friends. My schedule of course could have been better, but my college friends had already warned me of the schedules during freshman year. The thing that worried me the most was having three essays due on the same week. I would always tell myself that I should do my essays when I get them and get them over with, which never happens.

If I could do things differently during my first semester, I would actually study for that political science test. It may not be my favorite subject, but I should still study for it. I would have liked to have chosen another subject for my English class’ final paper, since writing about the recession is pretty boring. I would have liked to have gone to the high school homecoming with my friends, since we all ended up having things to do. I had class, and my friends were busy. Another thing that would have been nice would be having the same days off as my friends from high school. We always wanted to go out one of these days, but we were never able to find a day to go out together. We don’t want to go out on weekends because we are lazy and we want to rest on the days off.

This semester was a relatively pretty good one. I hope next year would be as well. Also I hope everyone has a great Christmas and a Happy New Years.

The first semester in Baruch College is over and I’m finally done with all the papers for the semester. At the beginning, I hoped that I could say “I’ve done my best in the first semester”; however, the laziness has kept me from doing my best. I wonder when I can overcome this weakness. I always wait the last minute to finish the works and couldn’t change even though I want to. The one thing that I want to improve is my laziness. The most obvious change that I have after this semester is that I use English more. During High School, most of my friends speak Chinese but I have more friends that couldn’t speak Chinese right now. Nonetheless, Baruch College is pretty good overall. Before I enrolled in this college, I underestimated the college because it’s a Cuny and all my friends who attend another college tried to persuade me to transfer. I was hesitated at the beginning but I want to stay at Baruch College right now. The college doesn’t really matter if you are doing what you suppose to do. Anyway, my first semester is not what I expected. I still considered college as same as High School, so I maintained the routine that I had in H.S. Yet, things have turned out not very well. My test grades were not bad; most of them were above 90s, but my class participations were terrible. I still haven’t used to speak up in front of people. I don’t know how my average is going to be for this semester, but hopefully it’s at least 3.5.

Finally, the first semester of  college freshmen almost end! Time went by so fast, I still feels like the first day at Baruch College. Remember when I first step into Baruch, I carried a lot of expectations along with a lot of worries, now it’s been one semester already. I can’t say I accomplished all my expectations, because at least, I didn’t get involved in any club yet which is originally one of my expectations. However, I did fulfill some others, such as making a lot of friends which I didn’t expect that I actually exceeded my original expectation, because I wasn’t really good at social communication before.

Well, I can’t say my first semester at Baruch is perfect, because I still have a lot of expectations that weren’t finished, and also the large amount of readings from every class really give me a shock that I couldn’t deal with it. I guess because I was still dreaming in high school, that causes I did not put 100% effort in class working, which made the deeper knowledge than high school more complicated, and eventually led me a bad test grade. Thus, at the end of the semester, I think I need to have a self-examination,  in order to improve my ability to fit in college life better.

If I could retake the first semester again, first of first, I will put more effort in class working and concentrating on class listening,
try my best not to fall asleep in class, or do more class participation to keep myself awake, so I won’t be worried about my test grade anymore. And also try to find some interesting clubs to join, and then my college life won’t be such boring. Well, I know all these are just hypothesis, because things already happened and won’t go back, but at least I can set those as my goals for the next semester,
which is not too late, isn’t it?

To be honest, I actually changed a lot after I went to college. I noticed that  I wasn’t so afraid of public speaking or class participation as I used to be in high school because of my language barrier, and my pronunciation is more smooth than I used
to have, which actually makes me really happy. Well I guess I can say this is really a big progress. I believe that I can improve more during the later life at Baruch, which I am looking forward to it.

Keep fighting!