Monthly Archives: September 2011

Hi! My name is Maria Garcia. I am 17 years old turing 18 this October. The task to describe one’s self is a challenge in itself. One can list numerous general adjectives that can describe half of New York City which unsuccessfully describe the essence of your character. What I can say is that the person that I was going into high school is not the same person that graduated and is a freshman at Baruch college today! I made the most drastic transformation that consists of my maturity and academic dedication.  I went from an easily distracted individual, to an academically centered student that hopes to excel in every aspect at Baruch College. I plan to prioritize my education and evade the temptation of partying excessively. Although I will not sacrifice my social life and go to the extreme for my GPA. College emphasizes the art of time management. I know it is important to expand your horizons and meet new people in a very diverse school like Baruch. Networking in college is essential for future job opportunities.

My main concern for my freshman year is to establish a high GPA and start my college career with a competitive edge. I also want to begin networking and thats why I have decided to rush for the sorority Theta Pi Gamma. In addition to the sorority I was planning on joining a team at Baruch but unfortunate for me there is no soccer team at Baruch. (On the bright side, Daniel in the math class,  has informed me that he is writing up a proposal to start a female soccer team at Baruch and I will help him). I plan to make my college experience a very rewarding chapter of my life, seeing that it will have the greatest impact on the quality of life I will have. So far I am very optimistic of my years at Baruch College. LC 09 are great people that I look forward to sharing my first semester with!

I’ll be honest, I have a very unclear picture of myself. There are certain indisputable facts that make up the details of my identity. I am about to turn 20, I was born in Brazil, I am an undergraduate, I live at home in Brooklyn, and I just ate some cashews. And then there are those facts which may not be all true, all the time. For example, I want to teach at a crappy high school to kids who deserve a lot better. I want to take a walk after I finish writing this. I’m probably not going out tonight. All of that might change. So who I am, overall? I guess if I had to say anything, I would say I am a person, constantly evolving and constantly striving for balance.

As a person who is striving for balance (as opposed to already being balanced), I am concerned, among other things, that I will slide into extremes. I wonder things like 1) Will I dive into my academics and leave behind my life, my friends, myself? 2) Will I throw away all possible chances of passing just to “make the most of freshman year” and have a lot of fun? 3) Will I be intimated by the smallest road bumps and run away, tail between my legs?

I worry about extremes because that was what caused the death of my high school experience. Hopefully, however, things will be different. Since 2009, I have grown quite a bit. My capabilities have  changed and my perspective on the world has, too. College will be different mostly because I have changed, and so have the people around me.

Of course I will continue to evolve and Baruch will fuel some of that growth. By the end of this first year, I will have a better handle on time management. I will speak to people, both students and teachers, with more ease. I will have a better grasp of what I want – from myself and from others. Basically, I have high hopes for Baruch. I have these high expectations of Baruch and I have to constantly remind myself that I should expect the same of myself. These next 4 years will be what I make of them.

I am someone who likes to procrastinate (I admit) and spend a lot of time playing games such as Pokemon or Megaman, though I am trying other games as well. I like the band Linkin Park, the singer Jay Chou and listen to some foreign language songs such as Mongolian festival songs. I am also technically challenged so my posts may end up in random places…

During my freshman year at Baruch, I still need time to adjust to my schedule since it is very unlike high school. There are several breaks lasting from 20 minutes to over 2 hours and that is a huge jump from the normal 5 minutes. Secondly, I need to start opening myself up to the new surroundings because back in high school, people always come to me rather than the other way around, so I need to change that as well. Finally, the overall teaching methods of each teacher is somewhat different because of many lectures where I have to take notes by myself rather than rely on someone writing it down on the whiteboard.

So far, the main differences between high school and college are teaching methods and breaks between classes.  During breaks I would go to the library and play puzzles on newspapers until there are 15 minutes until class starts. That is the number one difference that I am still getting used to, not to mention there are no classes on Fridays.

First year of college will definitely change me in the way I communicate with other people. Usually, I would try to avoid talking verbally with staffs, students, almost everyone because I might be scared of what to say, which is why I prefer emailing over phones and face-to-face. Another would be the way I behave, perhaps it would be more mature, but that would completely depend on the viewpoints of others. Another thing would be turning in assignments on time because college is not as lenient as high school so I need to adapt more.

My name is Kin, and I am an average freshman at Baruch. I do not consider myself outgoing at all, but I still enjoy making friends. I’m funny (or at least I think I am), compassionate, and I have absolutely no idea what’s going to happen in these 4 years.

Baruch is a new experience, both physically and mentally. As of right now, I’m still getting used to the idea of college. Some of my top concerns about my freshman year are probably the same for most freshman in Baruch. First, my grades; I really want to keep my GPA up, but I might not always be as prepared as I would like to be, seeing as this is a completely new experience for me. Second, the social aspect of college. Like I said, I’m not particularly outgoing. I’m not a loner, but I don’t party, and I’m not exactly a big fan of clubs. Third for me, is job experience. I don’t have much of it at all, and it’s new territory I’m very anxious to dive into. It’s a plateau I absolutely need to cross.

So far, the experience at Baruch is worlds apart from high school. Just about everything is different – new people, calling our teachers ‘Professors’ instead of Mr./Ms./Mrs., and most important of all, Baruch doesn’t have the same monotony high school had. Everything in high school was pretty much predetermined for me; what I could do and what I couldn’t. Here in Baruch, the freedom is there. If you’re on a break, grab some coffee, grab some lunch, go to the gym, take a walk, take the green couches in the library and nap for awhile. There’s a ton of things for me to do here.

Personally, I hope my first year at Baruch helps me become more social, more active. I know I’ll see more diversity than I’ve ever seen before, which is really interesting for me. I hope this experience at Baruch teaches me not to shy away from things that seem out of the ordinary – and to go for the extraordinary stuff.

My name is Roman Kostner, 18, and I attend Baruch College with everyone who will be reading this. I tend to always keep on track with all of my assignments and I understand the degree of importance the next four years will have on the rest of my life. For such reasons I also tend to keep my personal life separated with my work and education.

I think it’s impolite to talk too much about yourself so I will keep this as brief as possible. I go to Baruch because I did not want to leave New York to go to college and out of all the other business oriented colleges in NYC, Baruch gives the most bang for your buck. My priorities rights now are to have a high enough GPA, and network enough to know the right people for when I am ready to find an internship or a job. I am unsure of my major, but as it stands finance will most likely be it.

I started looking into different clubs that will best be suited for my goals, and decided to give the Finance and Economics Society a try.  I just finished touching up and updating my resume and I will send it in to them in the nearby future.

Baruch should be different from High School, and I’m hoping that that is the case. I was slightly discouraged during the June orientation when the professors and student assistants decided that throwing candy at the freshmen for answering questions correctly was a good idea.

-Roman Kostner

I am an average 18 year old girl who is very outgoing and social. I enjoy going out with people and having a lot of fun. I am very family oriented and they mean the world to me. I strive for good grades and hope to accomplish a lot in life. I love meeting new people and making friends.

I have a few concerns about my freshman year in Baruch. My top concern is maintaining a good GPA so that I could get into a very good grad school. I hope to become successful and know that I need to do well in college to achieve that. My second concern is trying to find a job that will give me experience and help me in the future. It is very hard for people to find jobs, especially if they have no experience, so I hope to get an internship. Another one of my concerns is meeting new people. I enjoy making friends, but it is hard when you barely know anyone in the school. I have met a few people so far but hope to make a lot more friends so that I have a great time during my college years.

I think that my Baruch experience will be different from my high school experience because college is much more serious than high school. There is a lot more work and I won’t have as much time to go out. Parts of my weekends will be spent on studying, as well as weekdays. Also, I will meet a lot of new people, which will be different from high school since I already knew most of my friends when going there. I will be a lot more serious about school and not slack but since I’m older now, I can go out to more places in the city.

I think that my first year in college will change me in many ways. I feel like I will become a lot more mature and grow up. This is because I know that I have a lot of responsibilities and that teachers won’t treat me like a baby. I have to make sure that I am organized and submit assignments on time, as well as study a lot. College will also change my outlook on life and I will become more goal oriented.

   I think that I’m the average college freshman in class, I do my best to pay attention, and I am hungry for that 4.0 gpa.  Unlike other freshman, I have already become a bearcat, and am a ncaa registered swimmer!

   My top 3 concerns about my freshman year at Baruch are getting a good GPA to start, making the right connections, and ending the year with an internship. Getting a good GPA to start is crucial to being able to continue in the same spirit, if I don’t start well… I’ll probably get discouraged and stop putting in 100% of my effort. Making the right connections is one of my concerns because you know what they say, the friends you make in college are the friends you keep for the rest of your life. Baruch has an awesome crowd, and I have already made an abundance of aquaintance, whether they are team-mates, class-mates, or some other random connection. Right on! Lastly, but definetely not leastly, I want to end this year with an internship for the summer, because I need work experience in order to start laying a base from which I will work up from in “the real world”.

     A lot of people are saying that Baruch is like highschool all over again. I think that those are the people who come to school, go to class, and go straight home, with no other connection to Baruch other than classes, and homework. I’m not trying to say that I don’t enjoy classes (although I can’t say I enjoy homework!), but if all I had in common with Baruch was classes, I would HATE it! Thankfully, I’m on a team, and I’m planning on joining an honor society (if my GPA will be good enough… which I hope it will be), and some other club – although I haven’t decided which one yet! Although I was a high-school athlete with the PSAL, and I was also in clubs and honor societies, everything at Baruch just seems so much more… real? I suppose it’s the maturity that come’s with attending college, but everything is much more organized, and people are much more cooperative as a team, and I LOVE it.

     My first year at college is going to teach me what it’s like to really be an adult. Long nights of studying, hard training with my team, hanging out with new friends, and learning what it’s like to be a college student in general are going to make me into a citizen of this world that understands exactly what it takes to get by, but hopefully it’ll take me above and beyond that!

– Mike