DTE: Surviving College 101

My name is Yichen Fang, but I prefer you call me Eason, as some of you may know Eason Chan, a famous Chinese singer. I came to America five years ago and attended both junior high and high school in New York. Before I came here, i used to live in Shanghai, a city where i have met many good friends during my childhood. My first impression on New York was that the air in New York smelled so much better than that in Shanghai. I love java, java not as the Indonesian island, but as the computer programming language. It makes me think over how computer and software are programmed and how they actually work. It helps me realize that humans are the geniuses who make all of these work properly, including what I’m doing right now. For my freshman year in Baruch College, I expect to build up a larger friends cycle, to learn to manage my valuable time, and to make significant change in my personality. In Baruch College, I expect to make more friends, especially friends from other countries. I used to have a very shy personality, therefore I didn’t make enough friends since I came to New York. Another reason is that I don’t speak English very well. When I first attended to junior high school, I only talked to Chinese people because I am not courageous enough to speak to other people. But now I am a College student and that must be changed. While I am still improving my English skills, I will talk to more people and participate more frequently in class. In high school, I didn’t have many writing assignments to do. It helped me develope a degree of laziness throughout my high school years. I know that College is much harder than high school and students must have positive attitudes in order to improve my reading and writing skills. Time management is really important in College, especially when I have part-time job. My first year will be pretty tough but I expect it to be this way. Bill Gates once said that “To be a good professional engineer, always start to study late for exams because it teaches you how to manage time and tackle emergencies”. I probably won’t study my exams really late, but the pressure is similar to what I am experiencing. Changing my laziness is no that hard, but I have to work on it, especially on time management. I look forward to my College life and expect to see good results.

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.

Concerns, for i am very concerned

Vincent here, that kid that speaks up awkwardly when he gets really tense. My biggest concern about college is what to do after classes. Living my whole life in the five boroughs is very comforting and familiar, but its also like living in a cage. The last time i left east coast of the U.S was when i was 2 and went to Mexico and Puerto Rico. Getting a little bored and sick of the place/need a vacation. Concern numero dos: I m getting kinda fat again. That whole freshman fifteen thing doesnt sound too good. The fact that college doesnt offer a lot of the teams i was in during highschool doesnt help my well being, also its another reason why i m a little bored nowadays. I used to fence, play tennis (not really just kinda) and play handball but not anymore because there arent any teams. Also i feel like getting sweaty in college is kinda disgusting cuz then you gotta trek around in that damn awful sweat and stink up the place. Its worse than that subways smell you get if you stay in subways too long, obliviously shoving that footlong down your throat as you begin to smell like a pile of horse’s fecal matter. Third concern. Finding that balance between the partying and the academics. No elaboration needed.
Summary: I’m bored, getting fat, and wondering if i should hit up that party or go study.

 College Experience? wait i thought we were still in highschool. (herpa derp)

Idunno. College is kinda retarded. Highschool for me was pretty good so idunno how college will stack up. I m not saying i m the smartest guy in the world, not pointing any fingers either but some people just make it way too blatantly clear they are stupid. There are also some smart people here and there that arent very considerate. If you already know all the answers, stop blurting them out and give the ones who dont know a chance to get it, jeez. They dont even try to conceal it. Theres a quote i remember that follows something along the line of “everyone thinks you’re stupid, so dont open your big fat mouth and remove all doubt.” The big differences are the amount and variety of people i meet. Highschool was pretty small, Baruch is that giant elephant in the middle of the room. It kinda evades me sometimes but i do realize just how diverse Baruch is. Baruch is also a lot richer than my highschool is, but offers much fewer clubs and teams that i am interested in. I wonder if thats ironic considering most limitations to clubs and teams has to do with money.

Summary: dumb people shut up, smart people shut up. college needs more clubs and teams that matter (to me).

What you can do for Baruch, and what Baruch can do for YOU.
Baruch can make me not gaf more about academics. Honestly, freshmen year mandatory liberal arts? Go eat a phallus. I graduated from highschool so i could study things that matter and are useful/more pertinent to my interest. Giving me a buttload of liberal arts classes makes me wonder if i should go watch teletubbies and suck on my mothers teet like the little panzy baby i am. Truthfully though i would greatly appreciate a more expansive selection of courses that may be significant to my future career path. I dont want to sound harsher than i am so i will conclude by saying this. Baruch will probably make me a more outgoing person, a more reliable and responsible person. A more worldly person who has experienced much more in his life in comparison to his pre-college days.

Summary: Baruch will make me a better person, for the most part.

Who am i?
My name is Vincent Cho, i have lived in Queens, NY for all my life. I am a 18 year old, Chinese-American male. I have black hair, brown eyes, bad vision, worse jokes. I like cheesy things: cliches in movies, presidents insisting they tell the truth, cannon rushes in starcraft, etc. I think i am a very kind and friendly person, but i have been told before that i dont have sunshine coming out of my ass and am a little scary. Also i m a pretty creepy guy, i do questionable things sometimes and sometimes its just best not to ask. I used to watch way too much anime, like kids would be writing term papers and i would be watching anime. I also play a lot of games, lots of hours logged onto starcraft custom games and dota and halo, etc. If you ask me my favorite number is 17, if i tell you, my favorite number is 19. I dont watch any ‘sports’ but instead i like to follow starcraft leagues (its a sport in korea so stfu). I m known for extreme and erratic sleep cycles so if you’re ever up and bored i might be on. Hopefully though the length of this post is so long, that it has discouraged you from reading it, but other than that, i m mad cool dawg hit me up (i dont actually talk like that, i thought it would be funny, hahaha).

My name is Kenneth Zheng; I prefer to be called Kenny—but that’s not important. I was born in Manhattan, raised in Puerto Rico, currently live in Brooklyn, went to F.D.R. High School (I know—SHAME!). I am shy, don’t talk much, and overly cautious about meeting new people. That last part is probably because I’m very cynical—I trust hardly anyone. I am also extremely apathetic. I don’t know if anyone else has this problem, but I hate having to listen to someone else complain and pretend I care. And I literally don’t celebrate anything (holidays, birthday, etc.) unless nagged into it, nor do I get excited for any of these events because I’m so apathetic about nearly everything.

My top three concerns about my freshman year at Baruch are:

• Not getting the GPA I hope for – In high school, I used to be able to do pretty good on every class without doing the least bit of studying/work. It’s not quite like that anymore in college (though I expected this). Now I’m seeing that I can only get a 6 out of 10 on a quiz after reading 30+ pages on the textbook. I guess I haven’t gotten a taste of real “hard work” academically.
• Deciding on a major – I have almost absolutely no direction in life. I am clueless about what I’m going to do with my life—no goals or ambitions. I suppose this could be traced back to my apathy. I guess I’ll just make it a goal for now to decide on a major.
• Finding a job – While my family doesn’t necessarily need more income, I feel terrible for using my parents’ money. I feel like I’ve done nothing to really deserve it. I feel like some bum staying home all day, everyday. I would like to just get a job, earn my own money, spend it whenever I want, and experience what it’s like to be in the workforce. The problem with this is that I don’t like dealing with people…

I actually don’t have too many concerns about college. I’m honestly not sure if that last one counts, but I threw it out there anyways.

I think what would make my college experience different from my high school experience would be more independence. Aside from traveling farther from home, I like that I pretty much don’t need my parents anymore for anything school-related (Aside from, of course, paying tuition >_< ). Don’t get me wrong—I love them and appreciate everything they’ve done, but they can sometimes be a huge pain in the behind.
Another way college differs from high school for me is the crippling amount of work that needs to be done. This is pretty much the first time in my life that I’ve been overwhelmed with this much work. The extra day to my weekend in my schedule doesn’t exactly help much either. But I think I should be the last one talking about “too much work,” since I don’t have a job. But that’s enough about me. I’m not really important.

Who am I? That is indeed a good question. Can a person even be defined in words? Well instead of just avoiding this question I might as well take a crack at it. I’m a son, a brother, a friend, an enemy, a student, etc. Is that enough for someone to know who I am? Probably not. Allow me to expand, my name is Intesar (yes, it is practically impossible to pronounce correctly the first time around) I”m 18 and I’ve lived in Brooklyn my whole life. I’m a good friend (or I like to think so) and an attentive listener (that is if you have anything of value to say). I’m a usually quiet person and kind of moody. If you try to talk to me in the early morning you probably won’t get a verbal response from me, just hand gestures and nods (I don’t mean to be rude, I’m just not a morning person). I guess the solution to this predicament would be that I should drink coffee, or at least some intake of caffeine. As shocking as this may sound I don’t drink coffee. One might ask as a response to that, how do you plan on surviving college? How can you go through a day of class after a sleepless night working on a paper?  To answer your question those questions is that I’ve managed to get through sleepless nights in high school with out caffeine, so it shouldn’t be to difficult in college right? Who knows maybe this will be one of the changes I’ll go through in college, I might have to start relying on coffee.

College is definitely different from high school. Many of my high school teachers would say over and over that college professors won’t spoon feed you, they were right. In College students are more independent, we are given more responsibility and freedom. There is an intense amount of reading but less writing assignments, we are given the due dates of all of our assignments in advance. In high school we were given the dates of assignments a month ahead at best. I think College will definitely challenge me more than high school, I’m definitely going to have to study more instead of fooling around during my breaks, it seems to me that playtime (high school) is over, its time to get serious and act like responsible adults.

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.”

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.

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.