Blog Post #3- Amandine

Making friends at Baruch was probably the easiest part of the whole college experience. I walked in on the first day pretty relaxed which was surprising because I remembered those four years of high school where my stomach turned into knots everyday at 8am. I was able to find my class without too much trouble. I asked someone for help and they were very nice. That was already a big change from Long Island where freshmen did not talk to anyone but freshmen. Walking into my first class, I made a quick check around the room to see who seemed approachable and who I was better off not going near through out the semester. To my disbelief, no one had that snotty look on their face. It was relieving but just a bit funny. I had been so accustomed to walking in a room and knowing who and who not to talk to that it never occurred to me that maybe I did not have to do that anymore.
One week went by and I already had plans for the weekend. I met this group of four girls who were just as motivated as I was to do well in school and who actually liked my jokes! It was hard for me to realize that making friends had been this easy. We started hanging out more often on weekends and we all studied together for big tests. Coming from a high school where I wasn’t sure if I could be myself to Baruch, where everyone was so diverse and people embraced it, was a complete shock. Only in a good way. Since I’ve been at Baruch no one has called me “Almond Joy” or “French fry” or “Frenchyy” just Amandine. I was not tormented in high school it was just normal teasing that everyone went through if they were slightly different. One of the reasons I picked Baruch was because of its location and I knew that with people coming from all parts of the world, the mentality of most people would be different than what I experienced in high school.