This first semester at Baruch flew by very quickly. It was not as stressful as these last couple of weeks are turning out to be. With finals coming up, about 3 papers and a couple of tests, it feels like the professors are saving all of their hardest, longest, and most involved tasks until the very end. The stress is just beginning to set in. I wasn’t used to being under such pressure consistently for such a long period of time. In high school, our stress correlated to when we had big papers, projects, or exams coming up. In college, there is always something that needs to be done, so I rarely feel relief after finishing one task, because sure enough, I am onto another one shortly.

Baruch helped me learn a few things about myself. One of the important things being that I do not know how to cope with stress. Until now, my coping mechanism has been sleep, but because I have so much work (especially in the present moment), I cannot afford to cope with my problems and worries in this way. I also learned that to cope productively, I need to plan my assignments in advance. I cannot procrastinate, or else I will be left the night before the assignment is due, tired, and uninspired, with nothing to write. In order to avoid this, I need to plan ahead. I work better in the mornings rather than at night, so by planning ahead of time, I can force myself to work on my assignment in the morning, allowing me to work more efficiently and productively.

My favorite memory from Freshmen Seminar is the first day of class- convocation. It seems like so long ago that we were meeting Professor Hensley for the first time. We didn’t know our block mates yet, which is odd thinking to how close I am with some of them now. That first day was when I realized that the people sitting in that room with me will get to know each other pretty well. We may not all be hanging out on the weekends in the future or anything, but our block made my transition into Baruch a relatively easy one. It was nice having classes with the same people, who all met each other during Convocation.

For next semester, I am looking forward to my classes. I never used to like school too much, but I really love it in Baruch. Of course, I have a few classes that I am not excited for, but on the whole, I cannot wait to take classes like, for example, philosophy. It excites me that I had a say in the classes and professors that I pick (even though it was awfully hard to book them). I also hope that I got accepted to TEAM Baruch; if so, I would be extremely excited to start working with them.