To serve your community means to exhibit selflessness. It means to recognize that we are privileged in ways we do not even realize and that we should help those who are not. We sometimes forget that we are privileged, for example, we are able to have a quality education, and pick our own career path. By helping people, we are actually bettering ourselves because we unconsciously develop numerous life skills along with new knowledge, and not to mention, we gain satisfaction along the way. We also learn to practice kindness, which leads to other acts of kindness and consequently, a better world for all of us to live in. Through community service, we are also able to learn more about our personal motivations and our interests outside of the classroom.

As a Baruch Scholar, my role is to develop new skills and learn new knowledge through novel experiences. Through this program, I hope to find different opportunities to help various groups of people. “Helping” someone is such a broad term because we can help people in countless ways, but sometimes we get so overwhelmed with this that we don’t know where to start. Thus, this program gives us a much-needed push.

The culture of service at Baruch college is especially evident in the honors students, who are required to fulfill certain hours of volunteer work. I believe that if these hours are spent wisely, we will hopefully not only benefit others but also ourselves.

I always find it particularly difficult to write about my past experiences and future concerns for reasons that actually help in explaining who I am as a person. I’m a perfectionist, and although that quality has accounted for many of my successes, it has also led to many of my downfalls. So as you can imagine, the pressure of summing up 18 years of experience in a limited number of characters is difficult for me to do, but I’ll try anyway.

I grew up in Queens- the most diverse borough- where I was fortunate enough to communicate with all kinds of people. I have an older brother who (although I don’t like to admit it) has had a big impact on who I am today.

In high school, I was known to be laughing all the time. I was a jolly freshman that was always finding the bright side of every situation. I was also very into sports- If my friends couldn’t find me, the first place they would think to look would be the basketball courts.

I was a good student, but I strived to get experience outside of school. I was interested in a career in science so I reached out to researchers and I ended up writing a proposal about how I wanted to research Western honeybees with regards to colony collapse disorder. I secured a mentor at Barnard and I was a researcher for about two years.

My mentor has had a large influence in my life, I have learned a lot about myself through him. I also learned a lot about myself through my experiences, and although I was thought to be optimistic, I realized optimistic thinking does not always work when put in certain situations, sometimes I found that I would have to find the negatives, in order for me to improve the situation.  Usually, I would be too complacent, and therefore, I wouldn’t want to change.

As a college student, I already carry a set of values and beliefs that I have previously thought were grounded but has been proven otherwise. I have already learned a lot during my short amount of time at Baruch, and I hope to explore more about the world around me and myself.

My concerns for my first semester of college would be how to manage my stress and time. I hope I am successful at organizing my time between my work, school, and family schedule. I hope to make mutually beneficial relationships and I hope to meet people that inspire me in every way.

I would love to travel more; to introduce my mind to new ideas and hobbies that makes my life more meaningful. I hope to become more aware of events that are occurring in different parts of the world, and wherever I end up, I hope to be a part of a change- for the better.

Thank you for reading!!!