Author Archives: j.esposito

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.

The hardest thing for me is to know what I want. I always have competing desires that pull in different directions, and Im often unsure what to pick. The choices we make, we make because of reasons. When faced with a decision, each decision has its pros ad its cons. Life would be much easier if the choice were always clear. But the reality is that choices are rarely clear. Not important ones anyways.

Every important step in life can be associated with a decision. Your friends are a choice. The college you attend and your educational path in general is a choice. Your career is a choice. Who you spend your life with is a choice. It goes without saying that your choices are important. A question arises: Do the choices you make determine your character and who you are as a person, or do you make your choices because if the person you already are? The first option means that you can change who you are, and the second means you are who you are. I’m terrified that the second option, the idea that we are who we are, and we make our decisions based on who we are, and that theres nothing you can do about that… that terrifies me.

The fear I have is that all the poor decisions Iv’e made, I’ve made because I’m the kind of person who makes those poor decisions. Maybe I’m so set in who I am, it’s so engrained into my being, that theres nothing I can do. In light of my poor decisions, that scares me.

A lot of the time, because I’m faced with desires pulling me in every direction, in opposite directions, theres a debilitating feeling I get. I’m paralyzed, and the decision is that much harder to make. But i have to make a decision. The fear is making a decision and missing out on whatever the other option had in store.

A lot of this to me sounds like anxiety when I write it out, as in the kind of anxiety that someone with an acute anxiety disorder will have. And thats actually a comfort to me. That means something can be done. However you deal with anxiety.

Sometimes I think I need to get out of the little world in my head. Sure, I want to be happy, and sure, I need to look out for myself, but maybe i should look at decisions as affecting the world outside of myself. I’m selfish. I know that. The decisions I make end up being what I think are going to make ME happy. I should start and more often consider what’s going to make the world around me better as well. Maybe that’s, ironically, what will make me happy.

I feel my playlist describes me fairly well. It starts out with on of my favorite jazz instrumentals, “In a Sentimental Mood” by John Coltrane. Im a fairly sentimental person myself, and the title alone reflects that. The sound of the song also reflects my demeanor, which is usually calm and reflective.

The following classical piano piece “Gymnopedie” also reflects that about me. Following is “Symphony N0. 7 in A Major, which begins calm and relaxed, but progresses and builds. This represents the fact that while I’m calm and collected usually, I can get worked up as well. These songs also reflect my liking for older things, and vintage culture, which brings me to the following songs.

“I Don’t Want to Set the World On Fire” by The Ink Spots and “Ain’t that a Kick in the head” by Dean Martin are both songs from the early and mid 20th century, who’s music has always attracted me and given me a nostalgic sense (even though i wasn’t alive when this music was around and popular), most likely because my parents and family listened to it a lot.

The next song “Space Oddity” by David Bowie reflects this same vintage liking I have, as well as a liking towards things sometimes considered weird and “spacey” (sincerely not a reference the the title). Moving on, the next titles, “2+2=5”, “Too Little Too Late”, and “January 1979” all reflect my inclination, again, towards newer and sometimes weird and alternative things.

The final song “On the Nature of Daylight” brings this whole thing full circle. It is considered contemporary classical music, reflecting an inclination towards new things, but also the sense of calm I generally have that classical music represents.