FRO 14 DTI

You see, you can be whatever or whoever you want to be as long as you know how to dream. I just choose to be myself. I know it is plain and nothing fancy, but I know I have made a very important decision in my life. I need to keep the dear decision to my heart. I need to figure out what really matters to me and what is not. Not too long ago, I would just go through my days with no real concerns to listen to my own heart. As I grow older, I find I have to find my own reasons to be me and it is very hard for me to do that. I know I always have a voice, but I never dare to speak up for myself. You see, I think about other people a lot and I pay too much attention to them. I even try to act like people who I honestly don’t care. It really drains my energy and often makes me feel so small. I like to look up the sky at night and wonder “Am I different?” The answer is “Yes, I am so different from everybody else!” I want to let go of my fears to find my own sense of self. I am glad that I can walk, run, and jump by using my two old good feet. My hands will help me to reach things. My brain will give me senses. My heart will guide me where I should be going in my life. I am so glad to be me, because I know to be me is just enough. There are always rooms for improvement, but I also know that I can embark alone on my journey to find true happiness that really matters to me.

Ever since I was young, I lived under the same roof as my cousins. Since they were all older than me, I did not worry about my future. I thought that there was still a long way for me to experience all the hard work that my cousins had to do. Before I knew it, I was in high school. I still remember how I felt when I was getting ready to apply for college. Everything felt surreal at that moment. I realized that I could no longer be the little kid who only cared about playing games, watching movies, and reading books. I have to think about where I am heading in the future. Upon entering Baruch College, I met many ambitious and hardworking students pursuing their dreams. I am slightly envious of them. My intended major is Accounting, but it isn’t because I have a huge passion for business. My parents “highly suggested” this major to me because it provides a stable job. But who knows? Maybe I will end up liking business when I start taking business classes. In college, I have more freedom to roam around the city and relax during breaks between classes. This is a good thing, but it comes with a price. I have the responsibility to get to class on time and manage my time at home effectively. Time management has always been a struggle for me since middle school. I always put off my homework and projects for the last minute. After class, I go straight home to maximize my time to do work, but I have trouble starting my assignments because I end up chatting with my friends instead. Procrastination has caused me to get an average of five hours of sleep per day. The balance of social life, good grades, and sleep is very difficult to achieve. Hopefully by the end of this semester, I am able to master time management without having to sacrifice one of those three things.

– Michelle Wu

This is picture represents me because it shows how bad I am with time management. The time is telling me to start my work, but I’m trying to avoid it.

Source: Time Management. Digital image. N.p., n.d. Web. 27 Oct. 2014. <http://www.officetime.net/blog/wp-content/uploads/2012/11/Fun-Time.png>

People often have the impression that if you are an Asian American, you have to grow up to be a lawyer or a doctor, and anything else was out of the question because other jobs don’t promise high salaries. Come on, face it, if you are a doctor or a lawyer, then that profession had been forced upon you. I mean, what kind of Asian likes History and Science? Gross! Asian Americans are typically represented as intelligent overachievers with higher grade point averages and Math grades. Can you imagine the parents of these poor children? Well, I can picture my mom running after me with my report card in one hand and a clothes hanger in the other, yelling with her Chinese accent, “What is this B+?! Huh? I understand if it’s for English, but Math?” Actually, I don’t even need to imagine this situation because at one point, this “imagination” was reality for me, but that story can be told some other day. Despite being an Asian American, I wasn’t really pressured with too many expectations from my parents. The only hopes my mom puts emphasis on are that I get into a good high school and a good college so she could show off in front of her friends. Yeah, you read that right, she’s using me! Boy, you should’ve seen the look on her face when she was able to tell her friends that I got into Brooklyn Tech, while her friends told her about their children’s acceptances into other specialized high schools, such as Bronx Science and Stuyvesant. I really got on her nerves, though, when I didn’t get into Harvard or NYU. Besides excelling in my education, she also really wanted me to be able to speak Chinese and English, not necessarily fluently, but well enough so that I could communicate with others and find a good job—and no, I’m not going to be a doctor or a lawyer. Boy, did I let her down, by choosing Baruch College and going into the accounting major. But I will continue to work hard and make myself proud, and hopefully, make my mom proud too.

Source: http://www.8asians.com/wp-content/uploads/2011/02/nerd.jpg

I chose this picture because I see myself as a math nerd. I love math, and plan on majoring in something math related.

How many of you still remember your first day of college? Even if we didn’t show it, we experienced some degree of fear and nervousness. We all asked ourselves similar questions like what would our classes be like, or where are they? I was overwhelmed. After spending four years at high school, I knew the hallways like the back of my hand and I had friends that I could count on. However, as I set foot on Baruch’s campus, my surroundings changed. I had to find my way to class and make new friends. In addition, with limited time and extravagant amounts of reading, I had to work harder instead of procrastinating. I learned, overtime, to take each day of the week one step at a time and prioritize upcoming assignments. Christopher Reeve once said, “So many of our dreams at first seem impossible, then they seem improbable, and then, when we summon the will, they soon become inevitable.” If we think about it, we survived half a semester at Baruch College.

This picture represents me because I constantly find myself reading textbooks.

Works Cited

Schulz, Charles M. Snoopy reading. Digital image. Find & Go Seek. CallFly Productions, LLC, n.d. Web. 26 Oct. 2014. <http://lehighvalley.findandgoseek.net/listing/snoopys-read–ride/on-site-presentations>.

-Shirley Lo

After graduating from High School, I thought this is it, no more stressing, this is where life gets easier. But, boy am I totally wrong. Yes, I was technically done, but done with High School. Now is where life begins, where things get harder, where you decide what it is you want to do for the rest of your life.

As I took my first step into Baruch College I honestly didn’t know what I was to expect. I had dozens of questions floating in my mind that wasn’t going to be answered until I see it first hand with my own eyes.

College is nothing like I would imagine, there is definitely more freedom to do whatever I want and everyone here is friendly, nice and offers a helping hand when needed. However, it’s a constant struggle for me when it comes to schoolwork and homework. Thirty plus pages to read for every class, quizzes, projects, essays, it’s all hard work. And it only gets harder from there.

Of course people can get by this, but my problem with procrastination and pure laziness gets in the way most of the time. Facebook, youtube, text messages, gaming all these things makes it even harder for me to focus.

So yes I graduated high school, yes I have more freedom but this freedom comes with a consequence, people don’t care about what I do now, I make my own decisions, I am the only one who can push myself to do better, I’m the one who can help myself get to where I want to get to in hopefully 4 years.

This is a picture that depicts how I feel when I have a project due, studying for tests/quizzes , or doing my homework in general

Source: http://www.yellowpagecollegedirectory.com/articles/dealing-with-stress-in-college

-Elaine W.

My experience at Baruch college has been amazing so far. I’ve met the most nicest people here. Starting form the beginning, when I applied to this college until now, Baruch has never once disappointed me. Yes, it was difficult to part with my friends from back home as they left to go to different colleges, but I saw it as something that brought me and my friends even closer. On the weekends, when I go home and I hang out with them, it’s a totally different feeling than usual. I get the feeling of happiness. The friends I have made during college have been wonderful as well. I’ve gotten so close to them in such a less amount of time and I am so appreciative to have them. Not only my friends but my professors as well. I like the connection that some of my professors build towards students to make class fun and interesting. The transition between high-school and college was a challenging process since both of the two are so different. I really didn’t expect college to be the way that it is. I will admit that college is a lot of work with homework, papers and exams but overall I would never want to change my experiences that I’ve had at Baruch so far.

This represents me because it shows my friends from back home and at college and how I don’t feel separated from them.

-Sanam Roowala