Monthly Archives: November 2012

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For me, my first three months at Baruch have been much different. Everything seems to be on the computer. In high school the only time I had to go on the computer for was to print something out. Now I have to go on the computer to get homework, read class notes, post blogs, take quizzes, and much more. All of this plus the time I already spent on the computer makes me feel like I am on the computer all the time. Another thing about the computer use is that professors don’t remind us about work as often as I am used to from high school. We are expected to know when things are due and this is new to me. Work on computers also makes it harder to get work done without procrastinating. I have all of the internet right in front of me when trying to complete work. College so far for me has been a lot of time on the computer and adapting to new styles of learning.

In all honesty, the picture above is by far the best way of showing my first 3 months at Baruch. Although that is not a picture of my room above and thankfully my room is not that messy, it is symbolic of my first 3 months of college. I have felt all over the place as I have adjusted to a different lifestyle and experience. I tend not to enjoy change and attending Baruch this fall was probably the biggest change I have had in my life. The reason I chose that specific picture to explain my first 3 months in college is because of my lack of organization and how it has slowly become more severe. With the increased stress of college and my laziness it has become harder to keep everything in my life labeled and organized. I feel as if as the smoke settles in this first semester of college, I am learning to deal with the change and will slowly learn from it. For the time being though, my life is a bit messy.

Throughout high school my lack of organization likely kept me from reaching the goals I had hoped to achieve for.  It wasn’t often enough that I had my homework in on time, and studying usually came the night before.  As one of my teachers liked to say, I was “a day late and a dollar short.”

In choosing to attend Baruch, I chose to go to school in an especially unforgiving place for a person like me.  New York City eats raw people who don’t have their lives straightened out, and lateness can really cost a person.  There’s little moping about, and that sort of environment bleeds into Baruch also.

I am rather proud of myself to have overcome an obstacle at Baruch, and it is a lesson I am sure I will apply elsewhere in life.  Seeing everybody around you in a business-like, goal oriented attitude is contagious, and I certainly have felt that this first semester.

So, did you find the differences? Well I sure didn’t and I have no intentions of doing so. This is what life has become: the exact same thing with a small differences tossed in there that I care not to even notice. This semester hasn’t done much for me. I drag myself out of bed in the morning to get to school, attend school, waste time after school, go to sleep. For some reason I didn’t think things would end up like this, never did I have hopes, but regardless this situation escalates through its own mediocrity.

The guy second from the right, his scarf thing changes color: orange to purple. I guess there is a difference in the picture. Look at anything long enough and you’ll spot something is off, I’m sure. Looking at this semester I spot that the only difference is that the future looks a lot bleaker then it ever had before. The tints and hues on my picture are getting darker and it’ll take a lot more then some cheesy effect to get it back on track. Maybe some photoshop will get it where it needs to be. My photoshop skills leave something to be desired but, in time, I’m sure I’d be up to the task.

For me, this year has been much like the picture describes, clockwork.  Day in and day out, this lower freshman year has been somewhat like high school.  Days are generally very repetitive, where I tend to stare at the clock waiting for some classes to be over.  The day is somewhat similar to high school in some regards, but the main difference is how the teachers operate.  This is still something that I haven’t completely gotten used as I think many of us can understand from music class.

One of the many things that I have enjoyed during this semester was the breaks in between classes; they remove the cramming of classes into a tight schedule.  One of main things that I do during the breaks is playing ball in the gym.  I generally have a routine for the week and it had basically remained similar throughout the semester, much like clockwork.

Unfortunately, another thing that has carried over from high school is procrastination.  I generally wait for the last second, if not just the last day to finish my work.  This has been going on for the longest time and still occurs right now.  This trend happened throughout the semester, where I lose sleep and end up rushing the job.

Just like clockwork.

The past three months that I have spent at Baruch have been very unexpected and different from any other experience I have had in the past. I never really had a good relationship with school. In high school, I always dreaded going to class everyday and hated doing all the work school required me to complete at home. But my experiences at Baruch are nothing like the experiences I had in high school. It’s almost like I traveled to a different universe or realm. Therefore, I used a picture of Dorothy and Toto in Oz from the “Wizard of Oz” because I feel it encompasses the past three months I have spent at Baruch. When I compare the professors, the students, and the environment at Baruch to that of my old high school it is similar to comparing Oz to Kansas. Even though I still do not enjoy waking up early, I like school more now than I ever have. Of course, Baruch has its flaws but when I compare it to my old high school I cannot complain. It has been a long time since I actually enjoyed learning. I especially feel like Dorothy because I do not live at home anymore. Sometimes I miss my Kansas but, unlike Dorothy, I think I will stay in the Land of Oz.

After 4 years of high school, I have become extremely used to waiting until the last day to do all my work. I was able to do this because all my teachers would remind the class the day before an assignment is due. Now that college has started, procrastination isn’t going to work anymore. With the use of a syllabus, it’s not the professor’s responsibility anymore to remind students to do their work. After my first few weeks of college, I realized that I kept on missing homework assignments because I forgot that I even had homework for the class. Since I have to keep track of so many assignments, I need a calendar/planner to keep up with what I have to do. My calendar is constantly on my mind because I’m always stressing about what kind of work I have to be worried about next. Without my calendar, it wouldn’t be possible for me to remember all my assignments and due dates. It is now a big part of my education. My first impression on Baruch is that I have to do everything on my own from now on. No one is going to be guiding me through all my classes and make sure I’m passing my classes.

Yep this gif is pretty self-explanatory. This semester has had some good moments but a lot of the times I’ve just been feeling frustrated. Especially right now when I feel like everything is piling up and there are so many little deadlines. I’ve just never had good experiences when it came to managing my time. I knew the work was going to be harder so I can’t really say I was caught off guard. And even though the semester is almost over I can’t really sum it all up yet because there’s still so much left to do. So yeah I’ll just be feeling like Jon Stewart in this gif until the semester’s over.

I guess what happens in high school applies to college as well, at least for me. First drafts are the final draft most of the times. They’ve been enough to get by so far. Who needs to revise a 100 page research paper? You either know the material or you don’t. It isn’t worth the time and effort for the few extra points gained from polishing it up. I had expected college to be very different. It is true for the most part, but the homework and essays are practically the same. The material covered in class is at a good pace, not a slow crawling one – calculus in a semester instead of two. The only thing I don’t like is the 50 minutes between classes trying to figure out what to do. In high school everyone went to the cafeteria during free periods. However, in college, there’s no set place to hang out.
Aside from all that, the desks are different. The desks you sit at change every time you move up in school. Elementary school had tables, middle school had tables/desks, high school had desks/less tables, and college has nothing but chairs with a mini desk screwed onto the chair. Imagine what they’re like in grad school, if you ever go.