This has been a very interesting time in my life. It has been a huge adjusting process, not just for my education, but in my life as a whole. I am living away from my family and in an entirely new environment. I am taking on a lot more responsibility and taking control in managing my life. A lot of decisions are up to me now. This has been a learning experience as well, especially learning about myself.  This time spent so far has also given me a look into the future. Things have changed, but all in all I believe it has been for the better.

http://imgur.com/599x2pi

I am kind of disappointed with my first three months of college. Although it was fun and I learned many new things, it was not what I expected. College was always a hyped up subject, but it really feels like high school to me. The work load is similar and the classes aren’t that much harder. On the other hand, I do like my classes, specifically philosophy. That is a subject that I’ve always wanted to learn about. The Intro to Business class I’m taking is another great class. My favorite part about it was that we were able to spend some time on the Trading Floor. My whole schedule is amazing because I love walking out of college at the end of my classes knowing that I don’t have to come back the next day. Yet another great thing about my last few months was meeting new kinds of people with different ideas. One of the most challenging parts, is finding that balance between this social life, good grades and most importantly sleep. As I am making my new schedule for next semester, I will keep all of this in mind and try to continue learning from my experiences at Baruch.

My first semester at Baruch definitely challenged me to balance my school work with my social life and job. I ended up not having time to go to club events and participate in the student life outside of classes because the two days of the week that I was free, I would have to work on all my papers and study for exams. I ended up not liking my schedule  that much because, given that I would get home exhausted Monday, Wednesday and Friday and work on the weekends, only Tuesday and Thursday were available for dealing with the big load of school work. Besides that, I’m struggling with deciding what I want to major in and that has been another burden on my back. My Introduction to Business class, that I was super excited about, helped me realize that I’m actually not that interested in Business after all. However, I have to say that this semester wasn’t completely bad. I made great friends in my seminar class and I took classes like Philosophy and Theatre that didn’t seem to spark my interest initially but ended up opening my mind to different areas that I seemed to enjoy. College has helped me become independent and I’ve realized that I really like being able to organize my day and plan my schedule and not have someone checking up on me all the time. It’s been 3 months of ups and downs, of confusion and excitement but, all in one, it’s been an interesting start to my college career.

            The image depicts my first semester at Baruch, which has been mostly a fun, fascinating learning experience. I really liked my classes such as English and Anthropology because of the amazing professors who provided compelling lectures and discussions. Especially in Anthropology and Sociology, I enjoyed learning about different concepts that we can use to analyze miscellaneous real-life situations. Through the class discussions and films, I learned to think differently with a new outlook.
Besides the interesting lectures, I thought the block schedules made my transition from high school to college much easier. Having certain classes twice a week rather than each day allowed me to coordinate and plan my school work. However, it was a challenge to accomplish all school work while handling three jobs, especially during the midterm’s crunch week. It was also stressful completing long assignments such as essays when they were due consecutively with other assignments. I think the most difficult part for me was to identify a specific schedule and stick to it in order to manage my time better.

Photo credit:
“Grown-Up Calvin And Hobbes Might Make It A Little Dusty In Here.” Digital image. UPROXX RSS. N.p., 13 May 2013. Web. 17 Nov. 2013.
<http://www.uproxx.com/webculture/2013/05/grown-up-calvin-and-hobbes-might-make-it-a-little-dusty-in-here/>

So my first few weeks at Baruch seemed rather easy because there were no tests. Later when I started getting tests from every class at the same time, it got a little hectic. My first test was in calculus though and I wasn’t too worried about it. I ended up not studying and made some stupid mistakes on the test that I knew I shouldn’t have. In almost all my classes, with an exception of philosophy, I did pretty well on all my tests. I didn’t like that. It makes me think i’ll do just as well on the next test and if anything, make me study even less. Teachers shouldn’t make tests purposely easy and then make them harder as the semester progresses. Once I do well on the first test, I study less for the second. If I do well on the next one too, I don’t study anymore. This shouldn’t be a problem if I enjoy the class but I think once I start more difficult and new classes next semester, it could be a potential problem. Overall though, the tests seem more rigorous in college then they were in high school and rarely any extra credit as well. But its a nice new learning experience.

Source: http://www.quickmeme.com/meme/3s0s6e

The first three months of Baruch in my experience has been hectic and busy, as I had expected from college. As shown from the image, the past three months of Baruch have simply been a struggle to manage time correctly. With constant 10 hour work shifts nearly every day without school, it’s been a constant effort to catch up on previously assigned assignments due relatively soon. College in general has been continuous role conflicts attempting to balance my college assignments with everything else. The class work load at Baruch is similar to my high school, which unfortunately is not a good thing. Having had no time for clubs or other activities due to work and other priorities, Baruch has merely been a location to interact with friends during lunch and class and receive more assignments to do. My experience of Baruch has not changed at all from the beginning of the term due to how limited time I had to explore the college activities. Although I’m currently trying to change this current cycle, this effectively describes my first three months at school as of yet.

The picture is a meme including an unknown work space with the actor Maria von Trapp (acting as Maria Rainer) from the musical The Sound of Music. The image itself was taken from http://www.humorcraze.com/look-at-all-this-work-i-havent-done-yet/

My group focused on the theme of health and fitness for our New York Times Project. We each found one article to talk about what we found intriguing to our current knowledge. Also, I wrote a short passage about Baruch’s Fitness Facility for the Bear cat section. We specially spoke about the benefits of multivitamins, the current controversy going on with soda in New York City, health issues in Uganda, and other relevant health topics. One thing I learned from my article on multivitamins was how multivitamins can indeed lower rates of cancer in males over forty.

My experience working on this New York Times project was pleasant. My group was able to cooperate and finish this project very quickly.

My group chose to make health the theme of our project. We used this theme because many people disregard their health when they go to college. We wanted to bring some health issues to attention and remind everyone to take care of themselves. I chose my article because it is about a national issue. The article reminded me that political issues will now affect me more than ever. My role in the group was to find a article about health on a national scale and to provide a summary about it. This project helped me understand how to organize with a group and put together new articles with a similar theme.