I’ll be honest, at first, I completely hated Baruch.  I was completely miserable the first two weeks. The classes, the professors, and failing to make new  friends all discouraged me and made me question my decision to even come here. Not to mention, the almost 2 hour commute from Long Island every morning. I must say, however, it has progressively gotten better. Now I’m loving it here. I owe my newfound love of Baruch to this girl, one of the closest friends I’ve made so far, Sabrina. If it wasn’t for her, I wouldn’t have even considered applying to The 33rd Annual Baruch Leadership Weekend let alone get accepted to it. When I first heard about it, I was intimidated by the very idea of it. I mean, I’m the farthest thing from a leader and I was always very shy and afraid to speak my mind due to judgment from other people.  But when Sabrina told me she was applying for it, I figured why not? While filling out the application, I remember laughing at the fact that they wanted me to fill out my current leadership roles at Baruch when I had only been there two weeks, so I left that part blank and submitted it. I didn’t really think much of it at the time because I was highly skeptical I was going to get in but life has a way of surprising you sometimes. Needless to say, it came as a total shock to me when I got the acceptance email. I was so excited for this new experience! Just this Thursday, we had a mandatory orientation for Leadership Weekend (me and Sabrina are pictured at the event above). All I have to say is that I genuinely enjoyed it. Everyone, from the TEAM Baruch leaders to the directors of the programs to the fellow students, was so incredibly nice and friendly. The entire atmosphere of the room was unlike anything I had seen at Baruch in my short time here. We did so many fun activities, such as writing our signatures from both our dominant and non-dominant hand, discussing our individual strengths, and breaking the ice with the fellow students by “squading up”. I’m so glad I didn’t let my fear hold me back from joining this amazing event and I realized that if I hadn’t done it, I would be missing out on so many possible friendships and the chance to learn something about myself and my leadership qualities, which I didn’t think I had before today. I’m so excited for what the future holds for me at Baruch and the moral of the story is don’t let fear of judgement hold you back from doing anything you want in life. As the famous saying by Nike goes, JUST DO IT and don’t worry about what other people think. That’s not in the quote by Nike, by the way, it’s just my own little spin on it.