He’s not here but it feels like he’s always with me.

He keeps me company when I’m feeling alone,

He keeps me company when I’m sad.

He stays with me even when i want to be alone.

That is love.

I want to share all my time with him, the good and the bad.

I want to hold his hand and to kiss him.

I want to always be with him.

That is love.

I want to encourage him as he encourage me,

I want to become his support,

I want to be someone he can be proud of.

That is love.

Three months of laughs, stress, and blunder.
Days that felt like we would go under.
But all along we stuck together
Through the sun and rain and shitty weather.
Three months have gone past and now we’re here
Passing our midterms is all we fear
Late night studying while fooling around
Writing an essay that isn’t profound
Three months to the future is what we can see
We taste and smell what there will be
Redemption, relaxation, playing with snow
No more exams, no more FRO
A semester in and we’re doing just fine.
Hang in there
This is our time

The city where I am living at is a jungle without tropical trees and bananas.
This is a jungle with 6.5 million objects that are craving for from survival to luxuries.

Let me tell you a story.

A story of my life, your lives, countless young folks’ lives.

Once upon a time, there was a young boy who was living with his parents in the cave.
One day, his father brought the boy out of the cave to get food.
Father said outside of the cave is very dangerous because numbers of cougars and jaguars are looking for games.
However, the boy thought the jungle outside of the cave is not dangerous but interesting.

The boy was ambitious. 

The time passed as the boy grew, and the day of coming-of-age ceremony has come.
The boy left the cave and built a little temporary shelter middle of the jungle.
The boy thought he can have everything if he can be had.
So, the boy started to learn how to throw the javelin and set the snare.
He stepped forward like what he did yesterday, the day before, the day before the day before……
Tomorrow he will step forward even more.

The boy is in a really complicated maze of his life.
He is vulnerable. He is not self-reliance. He is ignorant.
However, I believe the boy has the potential, the potential to rule the jungle.
One day, he will be in the place of alpha with full of responsibility and achievements.

The monologue you’ve developed in the seminar

Did we know everything about college before we come in school? Who I am, what SAAC does, how I learn best, what the leadership is and how we schedule our classes. I didn’t know about those things. I think it is obvious that entering college without knowing anything. Freshman Seminar would be more interesting since I don’t know about anything in Baruch and I learn and gain knowledge because of interested in Fro1000. Getting adjust in Baruch, getting good grade and choosing major which what I want to do are my small but big dreams that I’ve planned in this seminar. I’ve definitely developed now even though there is no clear difference compared to two months ago when i just got into college. While commuting Manhattan from Queens, seeing different people and sometimes worry about how I could seat in the train. Sometimes I wouldn’t able to find the seat all the way to the school. Because of scheduling my class by myself, taking notes in lecture with more than 100students and studying by myself in the library for midterm, I’ve felt responsibility for student and I’ve grown up compared to two months ago. As baby grows up so fast, it is invisible, but maybe I’ve been growing up every day!

Your words were priceless looking back now,
They filled my mind with aw and wow,
How can somebody so true and loving,
Could in the end be so cruel and cunning?

She told me I was perfect
I said no I’m not
Cause I have been infected by a disease called love,
And no, I was not protected
It came so fast and so unexpected
And the only time I felt love with her,
Was when my p**is was slightly erected,
No calls no, no text, now she’s feeling rejected
But I had to leave her alone
Because in her life I was no longer effective

If only I hadn’t been so glassy eyed
And forcefully became so surprised
That maybe I could of seen through you,
And I would of never had to meet you

But what’s the point in saying this now
You can’t go back to slaughtering the cow,
I will just have to live with the pain you caused,
And don’t you dare say you were forced

Don’t you dare say I was to blame?
How I was the one to light the flame
There will be boys after me,
And of course one day,
They will see like me
And hopefully one day you will see
That I was the man you need.

Started from the ground, built it to the sky now
Watched it fall down, like how I’m gonna’ survive now
You left me out in the cold with no love
And I’m just left cold blooded,
So I started to seek help, and
They all tell me to follow my heart
So I laugh,
Cause honestly I thought they were joking
Cause how can I follow something that’s completely damaged
And partially broken
And some tell me to follow my mind
But if I do that
I’d probably be dead, no blinking
Cause I got a lot of thoughts in my head
That have me saying what the f**k was I thinking
So what do I follow?

As I’m growing up, I feel myself to losing interest in my life. Unlike in my childhood, I’m no longer trying to find out what kind of person I am and stop questioning myself , what do I want to be, what do I like, what makes me happy and what makes me upset. Recently, I just lived in the rule that I need to follow and tried to fit in the society so that I can hide myself. I thought this is how the other people live. I believed it is best to live normally like others do. However, even if I believed that live like others is the most comfortable way to live, the bitterness toward society and myself was never gone away. When I was young I had dreams about my future and I was sure about it. I questioned to myself, if young Jiwoo look at my life right now, what would she think about?

This question was solved through watching people nearby me. Their life was different from my beliefs. Everyone lives by specific values, reasons and dreams, unlike me who just followed what others do. Among those people, people who I met in the college inspire me a lot. For me, college is just a way to get a job and I decided to attend college because others do. I was just afraid about what if I’m derailed from the road of standard. But for them, college is a place to learn about themselves through taking classes, get knowledge about the fields that they are interested in, and plan their future by traveling and meeting other people. That motivated me and waked me up who forced to hidden myself before. Through the people I met in Baruch, I began to think about what I like and what can make my life meaningful. I realized my life is once and precious. The answer is always in me, not others.

We are born to be emotional creature, but as we grow up society taught us to not show any emotion. We are shunned if we show any sign of “vulnerability”. Isn’t it funny how we are asked to showcases our interpretation of self-expression? You hear it all the time. “Grow up”. “Suck it up”. “That’s life”. There are countless times where I see people feeling hurt but they won’t tell anyone.  They think they are showing weakness. Why are we only allow to show some emotion? Doesn’t expressions encompass both happy and sad one?  Remember a time when you feeling sad, depressed and maybe even helpless. Don’t you all end up portraying yourself as the completely opposite as if expressing you emotion then is a sin or maybe abnormal.

Do you remember that time when you stood there looking like you are about to cry? Yeah I felt it, I asked but you didn’t say anything, and I understood and I won’t  force you but I just wished you trusted me more even if I don’t always seem the trustworthy type.  It pains me to know that you know I was there but you still feel alone. For those of you who always say you are fine when you are not, when others see you they know it too. You might think that expressing yourself might be shameful maybe it makes you feel weak, but I love your sensitivity and you seem to shined the brightest then.

How does one monologue? It is like talking to yourself. What wisdom could I possibly impart upon myself that I don’t already know. If not an exercise in futility then what is it? An out reach to see how others react to my inner thoughts and ideas? How would I react to my inner thoughts and ideas? Ach, I’m tired of listening to myself already. I’ve just confused myself by how little I know and humbled myself by how much there is to know. Who is keeping track of the errors that are made, the victories that have been achieved and then there is a silence, a slight wind begins to form and before you know it there is a Hurricane but you are in the eye. You can see the sun, what was what is and what will be all in one place oddly tranquil until you have to hunker down and the storm resumes, but its alright there are clear skies further up on the horizon. That is the journey through college, the journey through life. Like the sands on a beach imprints are made life passes through and carries on until the next wave comes to wash away the imprints and reset the beach to its original calm it was meant to be.

“I love New York, even though it isn’t mine,the way something has to be, a tree or a street or a house, something, anyway, that belongs to me because I belong to it.”
Truman Capote.

So many people come to New York with something to prove. There’s no other self-glorifying city that says that if you can make it here, you can make it anywhere. The persistent fascination with the city, the way people project so much into it, makes everyone to think that New York belongs to them. But there is the other side too. It is difficult to live here. You have to work harder than you have thought. You have to face limits and postpone your wish for more space or stability, warmth of relationships and silence. You need to speed up and meet deadlines.

But this is all about how much you love this city. How much it really matters for you? I like that walks across the Brooklyn Bridge, hours spent at Met , walks along crowded streets where it seems like every person came from a different corner of the world. New York is cinematic. It’s concentrated. It’s diverse. It’s where a lot of important things have happened, and so, it is full of history and legends. It’s a place of ideals, “where anything is possible.” This is why I’m here. Even though it’s so easy to love it and hate it at the same time, for now I wouldn’t want to live anyplace else, for all the big reasons and for all the small ones. I do, because it is still possible to build things here.