One Week In New York; What Am I Doing?

I was hoping my next post would have some pictures for me to post, as well as a new digital camera to boast about, but unfortunately I’ve been having some credit card authorization delays with the website I bought the camera from. Hopefully everything’s going to be OK now, but this week would have been really awesome if I could have used my camera because you see, I really have nothing else better to do.

The main reason I originally moved in on Sunday was so I could take a Chinese placement exam at NYU. I had taken a semester’s worth of Chinese over the summer, so I figured why not take the exam and see if I can get right into Elementary Chinese II? This sounds like a good idea, but if you factor in the fact that I haven’t so much as looked at my Chinese book in the past three weeks and forgot about half of what I had learned, you can see that this might be an issue. So I came to New York, thinking to myself, ‘If I come on Sunday, I’ve got Sunday night, and then all of Monday and Tuesday to relearn a semester’s worth of Chinese. Piece of cake!’ (The test was on Wednesday). However, it was only wishful thinking, because as you all know, Welcome Week in college means parties every day, and parties means Emoinacloset will be there. I basically gave up on Chinese at that point, so I didn’t even bother going to the exam.

But not going to the exam left me wondering if this was a good start to a college semester for which I promised myself I would work my ass off. Everyday I compare myself with my suitemate who always keeps himself busy, whether it’s by working hard in school, doing internships, or getting involved in club stuff. I have another friend who’s in this 4 year rotational internship program at JP Morgan Chase. It’s a friendly rivalry, but as of right now I feel like he’s clearly got the upper hand. Even when I talk with my peers who say they’ve been going to interviews for internships and so forth, I always feel like I’m so behind. I have friends who tell me that I’m not the typical Sternie (Stern is the school I’m in within NYU) because I’m so lax about everything, but to tell you the truth I don’t want to hear that. I want to hear people talk about me with admiration and respect.

Maybe this is coming out now because school hasn’t started yet and I feel useless, but I’ve been self-conscious about this for a while. Now, excuse me while I go to another party.

-Emoinacloset