My name is Jessina Wong. I enrolled in the CUNY Honors College because of the many benefits listed on its website, such as a full-tuition merit scholarship, and because I knew I would definitely meet many other talented students who share my work ethic. While I want to follow the pre-med track, I also want to graduate with a degree in physics. I am not sure if I will follow through with this, however, because I have almost no experience in either field. I hope to be able to look back at the Macaulay Seminar 2: The Peopling of New York class and say that it helped me understand the lives of the people who live in this city with me. I am interested in the different cultures of people from around the world.
I was born, raised, and still live in Queens. While I know that my parents have driven through Brooklyn before, I know almost nothing about it. I rarely left my neighborhood until I went to high school in Manhattan. That is probably when I started to travel to Brooklyn. Sometimes I would have to go to my friends’ houses to work on projects. I always took the train because my parents would not want to drive and, of course, I do not have a car. The one thing that still bothers me is how there is no direct line from Queens to Brooklyn, save the G line. As useful as some people may find the G train, I have never had to go to any place in
Brooklyn that could be easily accessible via the G. In fact, it would be more of a hassle to take the G than to make a detour through Manhattan. Instead of spending money on extending the 7 line, it would be more useful for the MTA to make more lines connecting Queens and Brooklyn. As it is, it takes me and hour and thirty minutes to get to Brooklyn College, which means I spend about three hours commuting each day. That is a huge waste of time when I cannot find a seat to do homework on the train.
The reason I have always lived in Queens is that it was considered the best place to be when my parents immigrated to America. Of course, the best place to be in general has always been Manhattan, but it has always been the priciest. Queens was the next best thing. My dad did have a lot of family in Brooklyn, though, so he would visit a lot. He told me that many families started off living in Brooklyn but planned to move to Queens because they thought it was safer. He thinks that most people probably thought Queens was safer out of prejudice. When my dad and his family moved to my neighborhood, it was predominately Jewish with the occasional Hispanics.
I love the diversity of the people of New York. While I can still remember growing up when the neighborhood was still predominately White, I have noticed a lot of other people move in. The best thing about living where I do is the variety of food. There’s a pizzeria on the corner of my block. Next to it, I can grab some Chinese food. If I walk a little further, Masala is there with some Indian food. If I’m not in the mood for something big, I like knowing that there’s a 7-Eleven right around the corner if I just want a snack. Without so many different cultures immigrating to my community, I would probably have a hard time trying new things since I don’t leave my community very often.
I am not religious, nor do I dance, but those are the next two things that interest me the most when I meet people of different cultures. Every year in high school, I would watch my peers perform in our Culture Fest. During the last two years, I decided to join them in the Martial Arts Fan Dance. It was the best decisions I have ever made in high school. I learned a lot of new things by visiting the other groups in my free time. In the Macaulay Seminar 2: The Peopling of New York class, I hope to learn more about the different cultures of people from around the world.
