DTE: Surviving College 101

If I make it, we all make it.

A monologue that will never make the Tonight Show, but Conan can’t handle this anyways.

Me.  My name is Leandros Katsigeras.  I was born on April 11, 1993, which means that I’m an Aries.  I guess rams are cool.  I’m 6’4” and I weigh 200 pounds.  I used to be 250 pounds but I lost a lot of weight and my appearance changed dramatically.  Most people say that looks don’t matter, but they really do.  The amount of people that “noticed me” and started talking to me after my Biggest Loser transformation was insane.  Anyways, I’m Greek and Colombian.  Yes, I speak three languages.  No, I am not a drug dealer and I don’t own a diner.  I’d say that I used to be more connected to my Greek side, but now I’ve gotten more in touch with my Spanish side thanks to my girlfriend.  Okay, I also have a brother, Nicholas. He is my best friend.  The countless amount of inside jokes and telepathic conversations make us, us.

Great public speakers are speakers who are able to connect to the crowd through their words, rather than actions.  They allow us to feel emotion.  They connect with us in a way that makes us feel like we’re not alone.  Time stands still and we are able to look up to that person.  In that moment of time, they are our leader.

Yes, I did not make transition at all if that’s what you’re wondering.  I don’t care though.  It’s my monologue.

Everyone has the potential to make a change and contribute something to the world.

To overcome any obstacle, determination and creative thinking is simply needed.

I keep my composure and don’t feel any fear.

Yet again, a bunch of random statements have made their way into my monologue, but go with it.  How about this for a closing sentence?

I don’t want comfort.  I want God, I want poetry, I want real danger, I want freedom, I want goodness.  I want sin.

I really dont know what to talk about. When talking to friends, i find i can go on and on about random stuff. However, when put in front of people and ordered to speak, i find that my mind goes blank. Well, we were encouraged as a class to say something about Baruch, so here goes. There is nothing really bad about the school. However, there is one thing that just *#$%&@ me off. The lack of windows. Thats right. WINDOWS. Not something that you usually notice when in school (or any building in general) because you are too busy looking through them, and not at them. However, when sitting in a 30 student class with the teacher going off topic, or making you write pages and pages of notes that you’ll probably never look at, most human beings would naturally turn towards the nearest window to clear their heads and stare at the funny looking squirrel for a few seconds. One day, when there was a break in the note taking, I glanced around looking for that window, so i could refresh and brace myself for the next wave of notes, when i noticed that the only thing in the walls was the door to freedom (which was shut tight at the time). When i stopped to think about it, every classroom that I had seen in Baruch was completely windowless. Thats probably why I have been feeling boxed in and twitchy these last few weeks. It is because of the lack of WINDOWS, not my increased sugar consumption. Now, I KNOW most of the rooms arent adjacent to an outside wall, but that doesnt make me feel any better when I am halfway into class and have a sudden urge to look at something other than the teacher. So, the next time Baruch has a surplus in its budget, maybe they should put some paintings up in the classrooms or something, instead of trying to repair the escalators that probably still wont work afterwards. This is my monologue. I thank you for listening, or at least being polite enough to pretend to do so.

So who do I think I am..?

I think I am just a normal person with normal life and normal goals.. actually a normal person who loves procrastinating as you can see.  I am an ordinary chinese girl who was born in america but raised in Hong Kong.  I don’t really know why im in america now, because mom and dad said i have a usa passport so i gotta stay in usa.. does that make sense at all? But it wasn’t my parents whom made the decision for me.. I chose to come at the end because I wanted to find an answer, or seek for something that I was struggling to tell myself, and I dont know what that is.. anyway.  I think the biggest challenges and concerns about my freshman year in baruch is that, I am trying to persuade myself to enjoy going to school and having a nice  college life, instead of feeling compelled to do it.  Right now i believe i am not enjoying it at all but i guess i will try. I am just those kind of people that simply showing apathy towards anything  about school, clubs, activities and any kind of school-spirit-related stuff.  I know this is a problem.  Another concern would be,  it’s not even only about baruch but the whole environment.. how can I have more topics with people? I am not yet too assimilated to the american culture and there are lots of things that I don’t know. So i don’t talk because I have no common interest or topics with people who were grown up in here. But I will try.. it doesnt mean I will forget about my own culture and values but I will try to get a little bit more americanized.  My last concern would be deciding my major base on what my heart truly thinks instead of just going with the flow. One of my friend told me that people choose to study business because they dont know what they can choose or what they want.  I think it is quite true. Originally I wanted to be an artist because I like drawing, painting and designing. But people said in reality, you have to be rich to be an artist because those paints and arts stuff are going to cost a lot. And its hard to survive in that industry. So I stopped learning arts since then.. almost for 5 years.  I think I will just go step by step and see how things go, there are so many uncertainties in our lives.. good luck to everyone.