Freshmen Year Completed? Check.

College is quite an experience. My first year has taught me a lot in what to expect in future and that it is only going to get more challenging from this point on. Many interesting things occurred this semester which impacted me in positive ways. 

The first happened in my dreadful English 2 class this semester. Well, it's not so dreadful now since I learned a lot from my professor and now I am doing much better. At first, it felt like all the essays I wrote for the class just was not good enough for her. I always did something wrong; either my thesis was not strong enough or the rest of the essay did not relate much back to my thesis, or I did not analyze enough, or I did not use specific quotes from the books, or I did not have transitions between my paragraphs. After every essay, I tried to take in her criticism and write better and one day I succeeded. My professor always read aloud the ones she thought were the best. One class, she was handing back all the papers that she graded and I was confused because I did not get mine back. Then she started talking to the class about a student who has the ability to learn from her mistakes and use criticism to her benefit. Then she said my name aloud and said that it was not hard to give me a perfect score compared to the essays that the rest of the class wrote. I felt so accomplished and proud when she was reading my essay out loud. It seemed as if I finally understood how to write thesis based essays and I started appreciating how much she actually taught me over the course of one semester. Now every time I go to her for extra explanation on future material, she always tells that she is not worried about me and sure enough, I get good grades. Last week, she was telling everyone where they stood, in terms of grades, in the class. Out of a total of 40 points so far, I have 41.25. I hope I do well on the final research paper to maintain my average in this class. 

There is this program I applied to in March 2012. It is called New York Needs You (NYNY). It is a program to help first generation college students go through college and prepare them for career opportunities. The program does this in a number of ways: mentoring, career networking through various workshops. NYNY selects about a hundred people for their program each year. I was chosen to be one of the two hundred finalists! The finalists go through a one-on-one interview and a group activity. At first, I was more nervous about the group activity because you have to work with five other people on a challenge but at the same time, you have stand out in one way or another. Our challenge was to create a board game to help high school students through the college process, but we had to finish it and present in 45 minutes. The time flew by and it was actually a lot of fun. I got an opportunity to meet interesting people from different schools around New York City. I really hope I did well and I pass this round as well, so I can finally get accepted to NYNY. 

A couple of weeks ago, I found out I got into the Dean's List for the Fall 2011 semester. One for one, now I have to maintain my GPA for this semester and the following ones to come so I can be on the list for every semester!

I also applied for this internship at the Arthur Ashe Institute for Urban Health in the Health Science Academy. I would work with children, primarily middle school kids, and help them through various projects over a summer. I attended an interview for that internship a couple of weeks ago and this would be a good experience for me. I get to work with the youth on science activities, projects, and coursework. This would help me on my road to being a pediatrician because it gives me hands-on work with children and science-related material. The only problem that is stopping me from that internship is the fact that I signed up to finish Chemistry 2 in the summer. The class literally takes up the whole day, four days a week, starting mid-July. I want to finish Chemistry so I can be free from it for the Fall 2012 semester. However, I did talk to a coordinator about my schedule and she said I might still be able to intern on Fridays. 

I attended a pre-health workshop last week run by the pre-health adviser from my college. I am going to read more of The Wall Street Journal and the science portion of The New York Times to help me prepare for the MCATs. 

Finals are coming up. It is now the home stretch for freshmen year. I want to end this year trying my best to maintain my 3.935 GPA so I can have a solid foundation for the next three years. 

Major & Minor Decisions. (See what I did there? Haha.)

I think I have decided on my major. I think I want to major in either Business Administration/Finance or Civil Engineering or minor in Business Administration/Finance or Civil Engineering. I will pick one of those for my major and one for my minor. I also want to take pre-med classes on the side. This is way I have different kinds of educations in my background: science, business, and engineering; three things in which I do well. This gives me an opportunity to apply to both Graduate school and Medical school. I am happy with my decisions so far.

Freshmen Year, Part 1, Completed. Winter Intersession.

So I just finished my first semester of college and second semester starts in two days. I just came back from an amazing vacation where I went to Germany and Sweden for a month during winter break. It was quite an experience traveling across countries and the ocean alone in an airplane, living without my parents for that long. I was scared when the plane was first taking off from New York to go to Frankfurt, Germany. I always had this fear that the plane might come crashing down at any minute but when I was going to Sweden alone from Germany by plane, it seemed like second nature. 


I stayed with my cousins in both places. When my aunt took me to their friends' houses, everyone always asked what I was studying or what I planned to be. I proudly said medicine, I want to be a pediatrician, a children's doctor. It sounds stereotypical when someone from South Asia says that they want to be either a doctor, lawyer, or an engineer, because in reality that is what the majority of people say. This occurs because of parental pressure; parents drill these expectations into their children's heads from an early age. It is true that my parents put that notion in my head as well; they have high hopes of me becoming a a doctor. Hopefully, I become one of the first in my family, extended and immediate, to achieve that dream. My aunt's friends were saying how it's going to take such a long time but I believe that it's worth the studying and time. 


I stayed in the capital city of Sweden, Stockholm, and in Offenbach, Germany. Sweden was not what I expected. It had a lot of hills and highways, barely any regular streets. It was also very cold, even though it was warmer this year than any other year. European countries are very beautiful. 


I found out my GPA in Germany. My aunt and uncle were very proud of my 3.935. I really felt as it I gave it my all this semester. Even though it's only my first semester, I hope I do as well in the upcoming ones, too. I'm really proud of the research papers I wrote for my history class. I wrote two, the last one I wrote was on how industrialization impacted imperialism and I got an A on that paper. I also applied for MRIP and CSTEP which are two programs that advises students on their college life. I also applied to the Scholar's Program, which is an honors program, that I hope I got into. I'm looking forward to second semester, and I'm going to try taking some summer classes or apply for an internship. It feels like a long time away to apply to Med-school, but it's going to happen sooner rather than later.