FRO 14 BRA

Coming to college was a big and frightening step. The stress of taking a step into my adult life. The stress of college and its hardships and all the other good stuff. But with time I restarted to relieve the stress. My first few months in Baruch were revolved around getting to know the school better and getting more acquainted with the way the my classes and assignments operated. I can not say that it was hard to get into the flow of college life, but it was a bit of a challenge. With these first few months, I began to learn the functions of certain parts of the school. I have spent most of my break time in the library using the computers for homework and using the printers for printers the materials that I need for my classes.  I was able to learn to communicate with my professors to know what if my interpretation of what they expect is correct, as well as, asking for help about an assignment. In high school, I procrastinated a lot more than I do now. Before I would do homework the night before while now I have started to learn to start doing my work ahead of time so that I may be able to ask for help from the professor or just not stay up very late doing what I have to do for the following day. I used to grab my hair and worry about being able to do my assignments, even cut a class to do it.  Now I am much more organized with my work and responsibilities. My first few months as well allowed me to make new friends and be able to ask them for help when I need it. I am able to not spend my breaks alone and always have a nice chat before and after class.  Overall, this new beginning has given me more responsibility and a steady  flow into my adult life. College is now my new adventure.

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If I could describe my experience thus far at Baruch in one word, it would be, “ugh.” While I’m so thankful for the opportunity to even go to college, I feel that I’m just not in the place I want to be right now. Starting off with my classes, I would say that the only class creatively stimulating and interesting to me is my English 2100 class. I thoroughly enjoy the class and I kind of feel like it’s the only class at Baruch keeping me educationally sane. I don’t feel like any of my other classes address my interests. For example, in my Precalc class, I’m spending so much time learning material that I’m not at all interested in or passionate about. Another aspect of Baruch that I’m not too fond of is the fact that it’s very business oriented. I feel like so many people at Baruch are so focused on making as much money as possible post college, even if that means compromising your interests and career desires. I’d rather focus on something that I’m passionate about and move on from there. As a result of this, I’d like to explore an array of interests and be provided with many different, diverse tracks for me to go through, but I don’t think Baruch really offers that for me. As of now I have plans to transfer to another school that will hopefully do so. Don’t get me wrong, Baruch is a great school and I chose to go here for a reason, however, as I’ve grown into myself I’ve realized that it may not be the best fit for me.

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In reference to the GIF, I would say I reenact this head-in-hands movement at least once a day. I usually hit a point where I just feel overwhelmed and tired, just like Milania Giudice in her equally stressful life.

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My last year of high school looked a lot like this. By the end of the year I had basically achieved every level of procrastination possible…or so I thought. The truth is, even though I know It is probably more beneficial to get work done early, I’ve become even more of a procrastinator. I’ve never liked doing work at home so I just end up doing it either on the train to school or in between breaks. It might sound like a negative thing to most people but truthfully, I feel like I can get so much more done when I’m working with a time limit and under the pressure of completing an assignment. Over the past few months I’ve learned to organize my time better so that I can get all my work done without having to take all of it home. In fact the thing I absolutely LOVE about college is the simple fact that I have so much more time in between my classes. I can get much more work done and I can focus on the content much better at school rather than at home.

I’m sure there are many of us procrastinators out there who like to party on Friday, go on Facebook on Saturday and just laze around on Sunday (and do whatever non-homework-related thing on Mondays) but I’m realizing now that maybe procrastinating isn’t such a horrible thing if you learn how to use your time wisely.

I chose this meme because it highlights the struggle I had with CUNY First. I basically spent a week going to the BCTC desk to figure out what was wrong with my CUNY First account, only to have each resolved problem met with three new ones. The most frustrating part was that I couldn’t do anything about it, I just had to tell the BCTC workers what was wrong and they would try to fix it. To this day i still have problems with CUNY First.

All-in-all though, my experience at Baruch has been very positive. I have a great group of classmates who are all very unique and very intelligent. I have good classes with good professors. In the end, theres really not too much to complain about.

Getting back to my CUNY First problems…

I’ve definitely grown as a person attending college, a noticeable change in just three months even. High school was easy for me because most of the challenges for me were only academic. I attended a small high school  so all my classmates were my closest friends, and I didn’t have to worry about getting new people. There was no struggle to find out if I actually was getting the financial aid the school was telling me I would get. There was no trying to figure out what my major would be (something I still don’t know) so that i cloud plan my classes accordingly. There was no registering for classes, and filling up a shopping cart with classes only to find out that CUNY First save it.

All these problems were new to me in these past three months, but dealing with them was a good exercise and learning experience. Life is going to be filled with new circumstances, and new problems to go along with them. Learning how to deal with the problems and stress has helped me grow a lot.

But like I said before… Overall, my Baruch experience has thus far been a positive one.

Elijah Torres

The image I have chosen perfectly exemplifies my first semester at Baruch. It is from Christopher Nolan’s movie The Dark Knight Rises. It is the scene where Bruce Wayne climbs out the Lazarus pit in order to return to Gotham and defeat Bane. My first semester in college has been fun despite all the work. I had the chance to meet great professors. With this and my accomplishments so far, I know that one day I will be able reach my goal. There were many times this semester where I faced challenges that I was unaccustomed to. One of the hardest was time management. It is extremely difficult to make time for everything. This includes my social life, homework, and regular work. In this captured scene, it is vital for Bruce to quickly escape to save Gotham. Often times I found myself drowning. As if I were trying to escape an endless pit with no one else but myself to help. I attribute the light in the image to the goals I set out to achieve. Fall 2014 at Baruch was completely different from anything I was used to in a school setting. There were many things I believed, at first, to be unnecessary factors. For example, the professors always trying to get us to talk. Now, I know that this is important, and will be important later on in college and in life. This is similar to my image. Bane had sent Bruce to this pit to learn a valuable lesson. Like Bruce and the pit, I have learned to appreciate the challenges I overcome. Before coming to Baruch I never studied for anything. Now, I find myself studying for even the easiest quizzes. Becoming academically successful takes practice. It is hard to try and do something unprepared. It would be as if trying to climb a wall such as the one in the image.

Image is from-The Dark Knight Rises. Distributed by Warner Home Video, 2012. Film.

I made this “starter pack” because I find it to apply to my first 3 months at Baruch.  I’ve never been accustomed to making a really long commute especially one almost every single day.  It takes me about an hour and a half to get to school  (on a good day).  So, Baruch has really changed my life a lot because I literally spend about 12 hours of my week just commuting.  This is a big deal because I have 168 hours in my week.  I could have used these hours to sleep comfortably in my bed instead of trying to sneak in naps while standing up on the train or sneak in naps while being squished by the obese person next to me on the express bus.  Although commuting isn’t exactly the biggest part of going to Baruch, it really does have an affect on me and the things I do.  For example, this has made my eating habits become much worse especially for the simple fact that I can’t go back home to eat during my breaks and everything is so expensive in the city except for the $1 slices of pizza.  So, for me, the Freshman 15 is real. Another huge concept about commuting is that the MTA is not your friend.  They will make you late to a class that you want to be on time and make you an hour late to a class that you have a test in.  Basically, train delays are my worst nightmare and traffic from staten island to the city is a daily occurrence but it still manages to piss me off every. single. day.  Sometimes I just want to give the bus driver a 50 dollar bill, wink at him, and tell  him he better step on it because I didn’t feel like getting out of bed that morning.  Oh yeah, also this includes my earphones because that’s the only way I can ignore all of the rude people on the train and avoid talking to people in the morning.  So basically these 3 months at Baruch I have just learned how much I hate commuting.  Other than that, I’ve learned that you can’t just walk into the class late and only have to fear other students staring at you, because you better fear your teacher failing you as well.  So, this is not high school where the least of my worries about commuting was convincing my little brother to warm up my car in the morning so that I can be warm and whether or not I was going to fail gym class because I never showed up.  The real struggles are waking up 3 hours before my class and working on the weekends and still managing time to barely do my homework. Yay.

As I write my third and final blog post for Freshman seminar, memories are rushing back to me. I have been a Baruch student since August 28th and in a nearly three month span, I learned the four essentials of being a Baruch student. The first essential and the first thing I need use in the morning to get to my classes are my Baruch ID and Metrocard. My Baruch ID is needed to get inside my school and I can never enter with only one swipe. My Metrocard has a monthly unlimited fare and it is the key to my freedom. I use my Metrocard everyday and it can take me anywhere at anytime in New York. The second essential is the reason I’m writing this blog post, I first assumed Freshman seminar would be similar to my Senior seminar in high school which was just an empty time period in my schedule. However, it was the exact opposite and was very useful. I was taught many aspects of Baruch and college in general through this class. My favorite memory of Freshman seminar was when everyone had to write a personal monologue. I wrote a lot for mine and it was a great release of built up emotion. I was blown away by my other classmates’ monologues because I did not know they were such interesting and intellectual individuals. Freshman seminar was truly an enriching experience. The third part of my starter pack for a Baruch freshman is the sign that many of us walk by on a daily basis. It’s outside the store that nobody knows the name of and is famous for their pizza slices that cost only a dollar. For the first week of school, I was a constant visitor and purchaser. These slices were incredibly thin and more often than not, they were flavorless even with the addition of pepper flakes. Nevertheless, these dollar slices satisfied my hunger during my two hour break on Tuesdays and Thursdays. At one point, I thought to myself that college really forces one to chose between starving and being broke. I decided from an extraordinarily horrible slice of pizza that I need to budget my money and also balance my diet. That does not stop me from indulging in a dollar slice from time to time though. The last and most important part of my starter pack is sleep. Everyone is so stressed out about assignments, grades, GPAs, subway delays, transitioning from college, Ebola, and the future that they sometimes sacrifice their well-being for these things. I learned that my body knows what it wants and if it is sleep deprived, I am irritable and slow the next day so if I ever have a free moment, I try to catch up on sleep. I hope that students next year can use their own starter pack to be a part of the Baruch family and that they make the most out of their Freshman seminar as well.

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I knew high school and college were vastly different worlds but I finally was able to experience it.  My senior year of high school really spoiled me.  I barely had any homework in high school but college classes are more challenging.  The classes move faster and more is covered in a shorter amount of time.  During the first few weeks of college, I had to adjust back onto the pace of doing schoolwork.  I think this GIF demonstrates the adjustment to a heavier workload.  Time management really is crucial.  The commute to and from school has been exhausting and very time consuming but I utilize the time to read for class.  Commuting also does not give us many opportunities to make friends. Baruch put us in a schedule block to bond over sharing a new experience and to form friendships but I haven’t particularly made that many new friends.  Although it is partially my fault for not putting myself “out there” all the time.

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This is me literally from high school to college. I hate reading and I love to make excuses for myself to not do it. The classes that I’m currently performing at a mediocre level require daily reading. My anthropology class requires me to read at least 30 pages a day and obviously I just reject this. Similarly in my English class, I don’t read the assigned texts that are due the next day. And I try to pray and hope that the teacher won’t throw a pop quiz. Of course, the teacher gives a pop quiz and I manage to fail it. Like, my luck is terrible as well. The days where I actually skim and read over the texts, the teacher does not ask me or quiz me on it. Then when I don’t do the readings, I get caught up. In my anthropology class, I just cram the night before and read all 7-8 chapters of 150+ pages right before the test. Apparently, this tactic really works out for me and that’s really why I’ve decided to continue to no do my assigned readings for the day. Sometimes, I don’t even know why I bother to buy the textbooks. I just let that thing sit on the edge of my desk and collect dust. It could probably even be resold at brand new condition at the end of the semester.

I chose this picture to represent my experience at Baruch thus far because I have a struggle waking up in the morning for school. Attempting to wake up at 6am almost everyday is work. It’s beyond difficult, especially considering the fact that I sleep around one to two. In the mornings, a lot of times I don’t hear the alarm go off or I continuously click the snooze button. Hearing the alarm in the morning is so dreadful. Even after my alarm goes off, I sit on my bed for longer than enough time trying to work up the energy to start getting ready for school. Because I’m so tired in the morning, I knock out on the bus, usually all the way to Flushing or Grand Central. Sometimes, I wake up right before my stop. But when I’m not so lucky, I end up going past my stop and then having to go back. The cold weather doesn’t help either. To step out of the house and have that cold air hit my face, it makes my mornings worse. The cold wind does help me wake up, but to have to stand at the bus stop, freezing, waiting for my bus to come, while barely having the energy to stand up, it isn’t fun. But still I somehow end up managing to get to school everyday. And when I get home, I’m usually exhausted, so I would always tell myself that I’m going straight to bed after my homework. But I never do. I always find myself awake past 12 o’clock. Then the next day I have to repeat the whole process over. It is partly my fault for not getting enough sleep, so it takes me so long to get up. But then again, I do have to wake up extremely early, only to look forward for a long commute to school.

Picture source: 9GAG.com