My name is Austin Fischer and I’m a freshman at Baruch trying to decide what to major in.  I was born in Manhattan, but have spent almost my entire life in Brooklyn.  I attended Brooklyn Technical High School in Fort Greene.  I founded the Ultimate Frisbee club and participated in the table tennis club.  Our school consisted of about 5,500 people with a 60% Asian, 22% white, 10% Hispanic and 8% black breakdown, so naturally I was trained by the best.

A few of my friends and I graduating at Barclays center:

At my school we were put into majors for our junior and senior years and I chose the biological science major.  This meant I couldn’t take classes outside my major, but was able to take organic chemistry, anatomy, genetics and other interesting classes in high school.  Even though I studied a lot of science in high school, my interests always varied.  I always wanted to study psychology and business, but never had the opportunity.

Towards the end of high school, I spent a lot of time in Harlem volunteering at a cancer research lab.  An amazing professor at Touro College of Osteopathic Medicine helped me create a project that I have been working on for the last year and a half.  The lab is not too far from my dorm on the Upper East Side and I hope to continue researching if it isn’t impossible to fit into my schedule.

Here’s a picture of the general setup under the hood and my hand!

And the view from my dorm window!

Over the last year I started rock climbing at a local gym called Brooklyn Boulders.  I fell in love with the sport and picked up my own pair of climbing shoes and gained my certification in belaying.  Although a friend ‘accidentally’ took my shoes to his college in North Carolina, they are in the mail on the way back and I look forward to bouldering in Central Park soon!  This is a picture of me climbing in my friend’s converse on the way back from the lab in Harlem.

The newest and most profound change in my life (besides college) over the last couple years has been the addition of two little brothers to my family.  Around 4 years ago my dad got remarried and I now have two little half brothers.  It has been a really interesting experience to see how much they develop in such short amounts of time.  Below is a picture of Duncan when he was about 17 months old.

I look forward to meeting and learning more about all of you and having a great first year at Baruch!