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Have you ever walked down the street and accidentally bump into a small Asian girl with nerdy glasses who keeps looking down at her feet and whispers a soft “sorry” and quickly shuffles her feet to get away? Well, that would be Melanie Ng. Melanie is a rising junior at Stuyvesant High School (haha get all of your laughs out right now) and doesn’t cheat on tests. She loves listening to music and plays viola in one of her school’s multiple orchestras. She is also a rookie on the school’s Ultimate Frisbee team, Stuyvesant Sticky Fingers, and is also a sub on the girl’s golf team. Yes, she’s a noob. She told me to tell you all that she gives you permission to call her one. She enjoys learning history and reading European literature, especially Shakespeare and Goethe. She despises science and math, especially chemistry.
Melanie is shy and timid around strangers. However when she can find someone like her and can communicate well with, she opens up and you will be able to see the real her. Loud, obnoxious, observant, and busy, she will always have time for her friends. She loves animals, especially dogs, and loves to travel the east coast to visit new places. She enjoys going to school early in the morning to watch the beautiful sunrise and to enjoy the quietness and tranquility of the world. 

She is a huge fan of Taeyang and his abs. She also despises G-Dragon and his weird hair styles. Both are from the K-pop group Big Bang. She is also a big fan of Lee Hung-Ki from F.T. Island. Melanie is a fan of good, unique, beautiful voices. She doesn’t really care about how famous a group is because of their physical appearance as long as their music is beautiful and pleasing to the ears. She also enjoys watching horror movies like “Hannibal” and “The Mist” and “The Omen”.

At the moment, she is attending the Baruch College Now Summer 2012 program. She is attending the program because she wants to improve her writing skills and wants to meet new people. She wants to attending Boston University or Columbia and to pursue majors in neurology and ethnomusicology.

Alison Kwong was born on October 20,1995 and attends Baruch College Campus High School. She will be a senior this coming September 2012 and graduate from High School the following year, 2013. Alison attended Pre-K when she was four years old before being placed into elementary school. For elementary school, she went to Benjamin Altman P.S 42 and continued her school life in Wagner Middle school. Alison is currently 16 years old and will be turning 17 in a few months. She lives in Brooklyn, Fulton St. and had been living there ever since she was born. Alison is highly interested in the medical field and wish to be able to attend a medical college/university. In her high school life, her favorite classes was writing arts ,Pre-Calculus and Art class. Alison had done a couple of volunteer works over the past years in high school. She volunteered to tutor young children’s at an after school program and translated paper work at an immigration center. Alison is currently attending a summer college program at Baruch College.

Karen Liang spent most of her childhood in a small neighborhood in Jackson Heights, Queens. She later moved to Lower East Side, Manhattan to complete her final year of elementary school and later continued on to middle and high school. She is currently a rising senior in high school.

Jia Min Zhao is your typical high school student. She is a rising junior at Brooklyn Technical High School. Currently, she is attending the College Now program at Baruch College. She loves watching Korean dramas even though she does not understand everything. She is trying to learn their language, though. She is a huge fan of KPOP and G-Dragon, a member of a band called Big Bang. She really idolizes him because of his unique styles and great composition in music.
She loves Chemistry but is in the BioEngineering major. This is because her mother does not want her to study chemistry, fearing that she would exploded herself in an experiment.
She enjoys reading books on her free time, mostly Sci-Fi or Dystopian books. She is quite shy around strangers, but very open to her friends. When she grows up, she would like to travel around the world. She hates the color purple, not because she does not support gays, but because she is just sick of the color. Speaking about supporting or not supporting gays, Jia Min is neutral about this issue because it does not affect her.
Her friends call her Fish because of a picture that was taken of her during Junior High, where her cheeks looked bloated. (It carried on to High School.) Her friends also think that she is bi-polar, but it is just that everyone has their good and bad days. Her friends also think she is crazy. They claim to know that she IS crazy.
She lives in Staten Island because she dislikes city life. She believes it is noisy and dirty. She prefers to live in suburbs, where houses are surrounded by white picket fences and the skies are clean from air pollution.

Allegra Kogan is a 16 year old Junior at School of the Future located in Gramercy Park, Manhattan. Focused on web design, Allegra uses photoshop and her extensive knowlege of the internet when she is hired for jobs. Generally you can find Allegra at her home in Riverdale, New York on the couch with her laptop and teacup yorkshire terrier named Sid Vicious. When Allegra is not at home, she is hanging out with her friends in various places throughout the city. In September Allegra will begin touring colleges, including her dream school the University of Pennsylvania. Allegra’s blog will serve as an outlet to update people about her daily life, as well as interesting things she stumbles upon in the city that never sleeps.

Jeanmarie Evelly has spent the last few years covering local news in the Bronx for the nonprofit community newspapers the Norwood News and the bilingual Tremont Tribune. She has interned previously for Newsweek magazine, and recently completed an education reporting fellowship from the New York Community Media Alliance, covering the Department of Education and New York City schools. She holds a B.A. in English from SUNY New Paltz and a master’s degree from the CUNY Graduate School of Journalism. She lives in Astoria, Queens.

The 1941 comic, Captain America: “The First Avenger,” came to life on July 22, with actor Chris Evans. Captain America is one of the first Marvel Comics. This action packed thriller is about a simple kid from Brooklyn who wants to complete his duty as a man and fight for America in the mist of World War II. Even after being denied from every recruiting station and seeing his best friend Bucky get accepted, Rogers continued trying. The opportunity arises when he meets a man that is able to change his life with an enhancing experiment, which turns him into the hero, Captain America.

Among the main characters is Steve Rogers, a wimpy guy determined to get into the arm. Soon enough he achieves this by becoming captain America, through an experiment procedure that makes him buff and irresistible. There is of course the leading lady, Peggy Carter, played by Hayley Atwell (“Any Human Heart”), and her character is a strong-headed woman. She works as an assistant general to the General, played by Tommy Lee Jones (“Men In Black”).

And of course, what’s a super hero movie without a villain? Hugo Weaving plays Johann Schmidt ( “Matrix”), who later in the movie becomes Red Skull. He steals the mixture that is used to create Captain America. he steals it to form his own empire and control the world, a master plan that is destroyed by Captain American and his team.

The director, Joe Johnston, captures the story and portrays just about everything, from action to romance, and even wise cracks to lighten the mood of the movie, but not too much to take away from the action. Johnston uses the 3D feature well, by having Captain America’s famous shield fly into the crowd a couple of times. Having this movie in 3D is an advantage.

This movie is a great movie for Marvel comic fans, and even some who have never seen a Marvel comic or movie. Even though this movie isn’t as popular Spiderman, “Captain America” did well in the box office. As of Aug. 7, 2011, the worldwide gross is $246,203,967. Stay tuned after the credits for a sneak peak of the 2012 release of another Marvel classic, “The Avengers.” 

The Common Application is quite annoying. I have no idea what to write for the essay and unless I finish it, I can not access the supplements for the five schools I am applying to. My choices are: evaluate a significant experience, achievement, risk you have taken, or ethical dilemma you have faced and its impact on you; discuss some issue of personal, local, national or international concern and its importance to you; indicate a person who has had a significant influence on you, and describe that influence; describe a character in fiction, a historical figure, or a creative work (as in art, music, science, etc.) that has had an influence on you, and explain that influence; a range of academic interests, personal perspectives and life experiences adds much to the educational mix. Given your personal background, describe an experience that illustrates what you would bring to the diversity in a college community or an encounter that demonstrated the importance of diversity to you; topic of your choice.

These questions are so vague that I have no idea what to write about. At first, I thought I would write about the daily influence of the Prophet Mohammed (peace be upon him) in my life. But, after consulting some of my college friends, I realized that his name is taboo among much of conservative academia and would subject me to discrimination from the admissions officers. I then considered writing about the Arab-Israeli conflict in response to the international concern question, but that would subject me to negative bias as well. Now I am considering writing about seeing my first byline published and the story behind it.