Author: t.qiu1

I was chosen by my classmates to present my monologue at Baruch Voices on November 2nd. My experience in Baruch Voices was really eye opening. There were a lot of people with inspirational, funny, and overall amazing monologues which made mine feel unworthy of presenting. At first I was a little nervous to present my monologue, but then I realized I didn’t know these people and would probably never see them again so it really should be no problem to go up and just speak. There were people preaching about racism in society, beauty standards of females, life changing experiences, and everything in between. There were even people rapping! I was the second to last person to go up on stage to present and by then all the nerves were pretty much gone because I wanted to just get this over with and go home and sleep. As I got up on stage, I began to just speak and everything went as planned. I recited my monologue and left. At first, I did not want to present, but I understood that it was something I had to do because in the future I would have to speak in front of people. This was a learning experience for me. I learned a lot about the struggles that people in Baruch go through on a daily basis, but most importantly I learned that public speaking is really not as difficult as I thought it to be. For the longest time I had a fear of public speaking and as I got older, the fear began to fade away, but it always stuck. This presentation, in a way was taking a step into getting rid of public speaking once and for all.

Baruch has a lot of facilities and services for students to use. I have been exploring around Baruch a lot over the last couple of weeks to familiarize myself with this beautiful school. Sometimes there is a lot going on and things can become hectic. One place that I’ve explored was the game room. The game room is a very nice place to relax and just hang out with friends to play games like pool and Foosball. It is a spot to just have fun and leave the stress of school work behind for a little bit. Work and school can get stressful so the game room is a good place to relieve some tension and just have fun. In addition to the game room, I also got the opportunity to check out the basketball gym and the workout gym. The basketball gym is huge and there are always a lot of people there trying to run a game. When I went there, I encountered a friend that I have not seen since elementary school. We caught up and discussed how life has been since elementary school and it was a fun time. Basketball has always been a way for me to socialize with people and the basketball gymnasium is a place where I will definitely check out again. Being a CUNY student also means that I have a free gym membership because I can use the gym to workout anytime. The equipment in the gym was really good. There are a lot more that I can do in this college and in time I will make sure to explore more of this school and maybe join some clubs and other programs this school provides.

On September 1st, my new college friends and I decided to embark on a cultural and historical journey to the Metropolitan Museum of Art. It was the first museum I have ever been to and the fact that I was able to get in for free made it so much more memorable. Despite almost tripping and falling on the stairs while walking up to the museum, I can say I very much enjoyed my visit to the Met. The grandness of the museum was what I noticed at first because it was a little overwhelming seeing so many pieces of art in one place. The artistic abilities of people throughout history amazes me and the historical value in some pieces really opened my mind.

From sculptures to paintings, the Met was really an interesting place to visit if you enjoy learning about history. I learned a lot from the descriptions on the side of certain pieces of work and the context behind certain pieces really made me appreciate the art even more. I constantly found myself in awe over what people had to go through to create certain pieces because you could at times tell what a person is going through just by analyzing their artwork. There were honestly so much substance in that museum that I have to go back and visit again someday. This was an eye opening experience for me and I highly recommend that if you haven’t visited the Met, you should because everyone can benefit from looking at art through history.

– Thomas Qiu