Freshman Seminar 2011: CFA

It’s already been 3 months; it seems like just yesterday was the first day of class. Well, not really, that’s just a figure of speech, but I do remember orientation day so clearly. To be honest, college hasn’t really lived up to any of my expectations. I wanted some crazy dorming experience, an intense love, and more time for myself, instead, everything seems to be the opposite. Lived alone in my own apartment, just got out of a relationship, and been so deprived of sleep I’ve been sleeping on the short 15 minute subway ride to school, sometimes even oversleeping and ending up being late to class.

Everything just seems so hectic; I know I didn’t expect anything to be easy for me, but definitely not this hard. Between work and school, I barely have time for anything else. I’m not going to say this semester went well, but it was horrible. I could think of a million more ways things could’ve been worse. If I could restart the semester, given I know what to expect now, I’m pretty sure my time management would’ve been a lot better. It’s always until the lat minute I remember something is due or if there’s an exam the next day. I am not an intentional procrastinator, but I’ve just been ao out of it. All I can hope is next semester will be better, that is if I can register for the classes I want!

Who am I?

I am a Freshman at Baruch College

I was born on December 17, 1993

And I’ve learned plenty in the last two months

Who am I?

I’ve learned more about myself during the past two months

Time management and doing homework are big now

But more importantly I’ve learned that I’ve taken a new step

Toward reaching my goals

I’ve also overcome many obstacles

Stage fright, nervousness are still a problem

But I have more experience now

Getting good grades are an obstacle

Something I have to overcome

College has also taught me many life lessons

For instance, I learned that professors can be weird too

And they can also be jerks when it comes to tests

And I’ve also learned that writing a monologue can be so stressful

But its all good

The next four years will be hard on me

But I guess I’m more prepared now

Can’t wait till next semester

Cause I don’t have to take Freshman Seminar

Elaine Choo

Who am I? Well I’m:

* A college student

*A daughter

*A sister

*An aunt

*A best friend, a friend

*A girlfriend

*A young adult but a child at the same time

I am me.

All these words cannot really sum up who I am.

I’m only 18, I know hard to believe, and I can’t help it if I look the way I do!

I’m in the second phase of my life- college.

Attending class 5 days a week is nothing out of the ordinary, feels like high school

High school for me was

* Small classes

*Having close friends but knowing everyone in my grade, it was always HEY!

*Reasonable teachers

*The small amount of responsibilities we used to have

*And easy homework.

College is the same, or so I thought. I have

*Massive lecture halls that make me an even tinier fish than I already am in a sea of 400 other big fishes

*A few new friends and over 400 other strangers that hover over me.

*And instead of loud and comfortable greetings, it’s become those small awkward hand waves and smiles.

*Crazy, uptight and outright absurd teachers that honestly couldn’t care less about whether or not I paid attention or attend class.

*A bottomless pit of responsibilities that is slowly taking over my life.

*A never ending load of homework.

My biggest fears in this phase of my life are not passing the class or tests.

My biggest fears are time management and procrastination, the culprits of

My poor test grades and class work in my high school days.

My biggest rival in college? Not you, or you or you, or any of the several thousand students in this school.

It’s me.

I have to surpass myself,

No more procrastination

Or excuses.

I need to take charge, and I will succeed

Elevators and Escalators

          I feel like that the elevators and escalators in Baruch College are self defeating because of the enormous amount of energy that they consume. Six days a week Baruch College is generating so much electricity that can be avoided by merely removing the escalators. This will force more people to use the stairs, improve our environment, and allow people to exercise more. Exercise is super important because exercise prevents diseases, improves stamina, enhances flexibility, controls weight, and improves your quality of life. By taking the stairs every day and removing our escalators, we can exercise more often and ultimately improve our life. Electricity can harm the environment because when fossil fuels are burned, it creates carbon-dioxide which caused pollution. Most electricity is produced by burning fossil fuels like coal, oil and natural gases. Whenever fossil fuels are burnt they release carbon dioxide that has been stored in the fuel for millions of years. This carbon dioxide adds to the greenhouse gases in the environment that are contributing to global warming. Most electricity is produced by burning fossil fuels like coal, oil and natural gas.

The removal of our elevators will also be beneficial because of the same reasons that I listed above. Since Baruch College has eight floors, it is unlikely that the Baruch College will remove the elevators completely, so we should compromise and remove some elevators. If that is not possible than Baruch should reprogram the elevators to go to certain floors instead of each elevator only going to the second, fifth, and eighth floors. This will allow fewer elevators to be used because many times two elevators are called at once. I haven’t made any efforts to address this issue because I don’t feel like this issue is so important. I am just making a suggestion that will improve our lives and keep our environment around longer.

Starbucks Restaurant Review

          What is that amazing smell! A light aroma that fills the air and keeps customers interested in their product. There are many interesting facts about coffee that people have no clue that they even exist. The Coffee bean grows on trees and is the second most traded commodity on earth. Yes that’s right I said second! Once shipped, the beans are roasted at around five hundred degrees Fahrenheit, the same heat temperatures found in a pizza oven. After a few minutes, the bean will pop and double in size. The bean will then pop again in a few minutes and at that pop the bean is done. Why do I tell you this? It’s not because I want to keep you interested (ok maybe it is) but it is because Starbucks is a mega famous coffee store that has an occupation in Baruch College on our second floor. I have been in the store many times before and I can testify that the coffee is delicious. I even have a picture of a delicious cup of coffee!

The atmosphere is very inviting, calm, and relaxing as many people are discussing homework, their weird professors, and how enjoyable Freshman Seminar is (This is not written to suck up)! Starbucks is the go to place for consumers to have a warm and inviting experience. My advice is to someone patronizing this restaurant that he should be bold and wait on the long line to buy his cup of coffee.

I want to talk about fear in general and my specific fears but before I talk about that what is fear? Fear is defined as an unpleasant emotion caused by the belief that someone or something is dangerous, likely to cause pain, or a threat. The key words here are caused by the belief because that implies that if you can train yourself to perceive all situations without fear than in essence fear does not exist. Just an interesting point!

My fears have been fluctuating over the course of this semester and I realized that I am afraid of new experiences, fearing that I might fail or not handle the situation correctly. I was scared of taking the Subway in the beginning of the semester because in the past I have only taken City Bus to school and this was a new experience for me. I was specifically scared of taking the wrong subway and not getting off at the right stops. I resolved this fear by taking the subway every day since this semester has started so now I am comfortable taking the Subway. My current fears are failing exams, getting bad grades, and ultimately not being able to get a job. I need to work on editing goals for myself so that even if my fears come true I can set new goals and hopefully eliminate fear from my life.

Following the majority of monologues, I’m going to talk about my fear.

I’m here at Baruch because it’s a good school, it’s in the heart of the city, it’s my home.  As many already know, Baruch is a business school, and I am here to be an accountant.  Let me be honest, accounting is not what I want to do for the rest of my life, not even close.  I want to be a writer, the next Edgar Allan Poe, the female version that is.  I don’t want to do math, or business, I don’t want to do five years of schooling only to take orders from someone who thinks that they’re better than me.  I want to write.  I want to write poems, short stories, novellas.  I want to be recognized for my creativity and the way people can relate to my work, not because of the way I crunch numbers and how fast I can add 42 to 58 and divide by 10.

And that brings me to my fear.  I want to be recognized, I want to be liked.  But not really as a person, for those of you who are in my classes, I’m usually in the back keeping to myself.  I couldn’t care less about how people view me as a person, but as a writer, as a creator, as an artist, well that’s a different story.  It’s hard to have two different opinions, “Wow, you’re a great writer!  Show me more?” or “This needs a lot of work, this isn’t close to what was needed to be done,” because I never know who to believe.  To have someone pick apart your work and treat you as if you are something off their shoe, it’s depressing.  It doesn’t matter that I’ve won a writing contest, that I’ve been asked to compose a compilation of my poems and short stories, the words of those who degrade my work will forever be in my mind, it’ll be who defines me.

So why am I at Baruch?  Baruch, for the most part, isn’t for creative writers.  If one goes to Baruch, chances are they are going for business, which is what I am doing.  In accounting, someone’s not going to degrade my work, telling me that it’s not creative enough.  It’s simply whether or not my math is correct.   I can take it if someone tells me that I messed up what 20 x 43 is but for someone to tell me that my creative outlet isn’t good enough for them, makes me not want to write anymore.

Everyone has a subject that they just can’t understand. No matter how hard they try, they just can’t comprehend it. For me its math. From graphs to equations, it just draws blanks from me. I for the life of me cannot understand math concepts unless I have it drilled into my head continually by friends who actually know what they’re doing, unlike some teachers I used to have. Some of them would teach so fast that by the time I get my mind around one mathematical concept, the teacher is light years away on some other chapter. Plus I only understand the basic ideas and am unable to venture into it’s more complicated territory. I won’t even remember it for long either, especially those god awful formulas with their x’s and y’s and every other alphabet that exists. And numbers. Those bloody numbers.  It’s always been my downfall. In school I’d do decently in my other classes yet my grades are always pulled down by god damn math. I suppose I can always say that its hereditary since my family isn’t really known for their exemplary math prowess but its really just a subject that I can’t fully grasp no matter how hard I try. If I were to get dramatic about this, I’d say that math is the bane of my life. It is a cruel and sadistic overlord that occasionally shows me unexpected kindness. Its a love-hate relationship. I hate it until I understand it, then I love it but some hate still lurks around waiting to dominate as it almost always does. I guess a repeated, short lived infatuation is a better way to describe it and it’s almost masochistic really. I suffer through it because its so fascinating when I finally understand it. It pains me but I keep coming back for more and I hate it. If I could, I’d avoid it all together to save myself from imminent failure but unfortunately I can’t. I wouldn’t say I have the same problems in other subjects though, except science, but that’s a whole other quandary that I have to cry over. I mean, give me an essay to write, I’ll have the whole outline laid out in my head within 5 minutes. Give me a complicated math question to solve, I’ll stare blankly at it for 30 minutes before concocting some b.s. formula to solve it. I really envy those who can look at the same question that gives me such headaches and go “wow that’s easy” and solve it within 2 minutes. It really boggles the mind how they can look at such complex problems and solve it so easily without succumbing to mind numbing frustration. But after years of struggling in math, I’ve learned to just accept my failures. For example: say I were to bomb my history test, I’d be pretty disappointed. But if it was my math test, then I’d just shrug and think oh well I saw this coming anyways. Then I’d look around and see other students hanging their heads in shame and find comfort in the fact that I’m not alone in this.

A simple little girl
Living in a simple big city
In a simple ginormous world
Creative and passionate, with
Endless possibilities

Zipped into her own imagination
Enjoying every bit of life
Never giving up, never saying never
Gaining knowledge of all there is to know

I LIKE a lot of things.
I LIKE rice pudding,
I LIKE red velvets,
I LIKE ice cream,
I LIKE food.

I LIKE  a lot of things.
I LIKE beaches,
I LIKE movies,
I LIKE parks,
I LIKE fun.

I LIKE  a lot of things.
I LIKE country,
I LIKE R&B,
I LIKE jazz,
I LIKE music.

I LIKE  a lot of things.
I LIKE badminton,
I LIKE dodge ball,
I LIKE running,
I LIKE sports.

I LIKE  a lot of things.
I LIKE penguins,
I LIKE dogs,
I LIKE cows,
I LIKE animals.

I LIKE life.

i hate clowns and dolls, i think they are disgusting
they scare me a lot too
clowns with ridiculous huge red noses for no reason
and big shoes…when i’m pretty sure they have small feet.
and what’s with the ugly outfits?
i mean even a hippo can dress better than that
i tried to google search on how they looked like because i forgot the image of them
and out popped a white faced clown with a huge receding hair line,
along with a red afro-like type of hair
they can’t even put makeup on properly
sometimes i want to smack the person who created the idea of clowns
when i was little, i watched scary movie 2 with the clown in it
and it was just sitting on a rocking chair, but later on the scene it shows that the clown is gone.
after that movie, i am convinced that clowns are horrifying.
and the deal with dolls?
one word: chucky.
i despise that movie
i am utterly convinced that dolls are alive
yes, even in the morning, they are watching you…
waiting to strike you at night.
i also think barbies are serial killers
i think of them as jealous women waiting to kill their next victim
i also watched this move called toy soldiers
it had action figures and dolls coming alive to fight each other…
i kind of thought it was dumb
when i was in the 3rd grade, i won a barbie doll
i was pretty happy with it, or at least tried to be
every night while i slept i was paranoid that the barbie would come into my bed and somehow kill me with a tiny knife
after a few days i couldn’t take the suspense anymore
and i ripped the barbie’s head off, placed it in a garbage can in the kitchen
then i threw the rest of what was left of the barbie in a separate trash can
you never know if barbies can walk and try to attach their head again
yeah…i hate them that much.
the rest of my toys that resembled like dolls were also thrown away
they are creepy and not entertaining at all
p.s. if you have any dolls, you’re pretty much done for