I chose this gif to represent my first semester at Baruch. The poor guy looks so overwhelmed and that’s exactly how I feel. I remember when I was a freshman in high school and the sophomores in my geometry class recalled how easy the ninth grade was and I just sat there like…you mean it gets worse than this? I always make things harder than they should be and I think Im doing that again this semester. I can have a simple assignment to do but I just overreact and waste so much time on something that would take an average person half that. I have two desks in my room and they both somehow end up looking like the gif. I also kind of like how the guy doesn’t know where to start, and that’s how I am too. The week after Thanksgiving is going to be so hectic because I have so many things due and I feel like I’m going to be eating turkey while proofreading my papers.      I have been dreading the month of December since I got my syllabi.

Something I learned about myself since I started college was that I need to stop comparing myself to others. Each professor has their own grading policies and style of teaching that I may not be used to and that I can’t just compare myself to someone who got a better grade than me. I need to learn that those who try even harder than me will receive a better grade, if I try harder then I’ll get a better grade. Something that gets me angry is when someone who brags about barely working on it gets a better grade than I am. I guess that’s just another thing I need to learn, about how unfair life is, oh well.

My favorite moment from FRO was when we were able to split into groups to discuss how we felt about our professors and the classes themselves. It was very interesting to see what everyone had to say about our classes and to see their advise as to how to deal with some of the issues. Some of my favorite comments were about how someone complained that there weren’t enough chairs in one of our classes and it just seemed like a weird thing to complain about and it was even funnier when someone just told them to get to class earlier. They were some minor issues but that just showed how we don’t really take ourselves too seriously.

There isn’t really something I look forward to for next semester because, yes, you guessed it, I”m already stressing over it. It took me two hours to register for classes and I almost didn’t get a class I wanted and it was just a stressful event and there isn’t anything that is making me feel excited. I’m excited about not having two hour gaps anymore and finishing some of the required classes. I guess I’ll see the sooner I get to the date.

I was labeled “Smart” when I was in the second grade. Before then, my mom and brother would have to do my homework for me because I refused to do it myself. Something changed in me, I realized that I did not want to fail so early in life, I must have been wise beyond my years. My strength seemed to be with writing, some of my writing would make my teachers so proud they would proudly present it to others. Slowly, the “smart” label soon followed me into other grades, students would ask me for help and I would find myself running around trying to help them. My mom also starting noticing how well I was doing in school and I would catch her talking to relatives about how smart her children were. The other day, as I was reading my sociology textbook I read an interesting study about telling your kids that they are smart. The kids who were told that they were smart didn’t want to challenge themselves because they were afraid to fail – afraid of not being “smart” anymore. I had to look up from the textbook and look around to realize that I was just like one of those students in the study. I was terrified of starting college because I was afraid of failure of no longer being the girl with the brain. This concern held me back many times. I didn’t choose the harder math class because I heard that the class was difficult. What was I supposed to do in college? Honestly, I have yet to figure that out and I’ve had moments where I felt so overwhelmed I don’t know what to do. I don’t have normal thoughts anymore. I am constantly planning out what assignment I have to do in order to stay on track. Even though I continue to have that anxiety in the back of my mind, I know that I will be okay. I probably will not succeed that everything I do but that shouldn’t stop me from trying new things. It’s better to fail now than in the future.

     Upon receiving this assignment, I believed that I would never find images that represent who I am. I decided to go with images for this assignment because my mother is obsessed with taking pictures and they have the ability to tell a story. The first image is of my mother, my brother and I. I chose this image because it shows the bond that my brother and I have and I am crying in it, my parents swear  I would never stop crying. The second image was taken long time ago but is one of my favorites. As an infant, I would not go to sleep unless it was my dad that rocked me to sleep, no matter how hard my mother tried, if it wasn’t him, I would not sleep. The first two images show the love I have for my family and how they had to sacrifice so much to raise my brother and I, and trust me, I was not an “easy” child. The third image makes me laugh because of my horrendous hairstyle – what was my mom thinking? Even though I have had some questionable looks in my past, I’m glad I was lucky enough to have a happy childhood. I spent most of my childhood on Junction boulevard and I found my way back to it, I now have to go take the 7 train everyday to go to Baruch. For friend’s birthdays, I like to make unique photoshopped cards that make them laugh. This particular image is one of my favorite cards I have made and it also serves as a way to show how deadly allergic I am to peanut butter, I joke with my friend Valery (pictured above) that if she gets too close, I will die. The sixth image is one of my cousin Massiel and I on my sixteenth birthday. Massiel serves as a great inspiration to me because of her intelligence and work ethic. The second to last image includes two dearest high school friends on a day that put an official end to high school, I worked very hard in high school and I proudly showed off my achievements. The eighth and final image is that of candles arranged in the shape of a heart, I am very easily impressed  with candles and I love that they come in many different shapes, sizes and smells.