The General Insights of The Life of a Brown Boy

Hi, my name is Tamim Uddin (pronounced: he/him). I’m a junior student at CCNY and am trying to get into mechanical engineering by that semester. About me: I was born and raised in Bangladesh, yet I have been living in New York, USA, for four years. Currently, I live in Jackson Heights, Queens. I love hanging out with friends, playing soccer (not at a professional level), going to the gym, and walking in my free time. This summer was a good chance for me to gain some muscles, but as the semester starts, I struggle with managing my passions and classes. Besides, I also love walking, and me and one of my close friends walked for hours without any specific destination, and it was a totally different experience. Also, I enjoy playing soccer, and this summer I played it several times with my friends (just for fun). Besides, I also play cricket, and I played for the high school cricket team (WC Bryant High School). However, I’m still exploring myself, and life has become much more complicated since 2018, when I arrived in the United States with my whole family. Later on, my life unexpectedly changed, and I had to suffer and sacrifice a lot in order to cope with education and overall adaptations, including mastering a new language. In addition, I’m multilingual: Bangla is my first language, and I can also speak and understand Hindi, Urdu (I need more practice in speaking to get fluency), and obviously English as well. As I mentioned earlier, I go to the gym, and the gym helps me a lot with so many things. Although I don’t have a six pack, I’m fit and healthy, and I view it more in terms of my mental health than my physical health. For example, every week going to the gym not only builds up a strong physique but also develops a hard work mentality and trains me to tolerate pain, which is really the most significant reason I always try to keep up with the gym; it’s my therapy. Specifically, I journal my days and often read some self-help books. Further, the three strong things that are the foundation of my discipline are exercise, journaling, and faith. Currently, I’m reading ‘Can’t Hurt Me’ by David Goggins. I will really recommend this book to anyone who wants to read it. In that book, I acknowledged how hard David Goggins life was. He had a horrific childhood, but he still fought against all his sufferings and became one of the toughest navy seals not only in the USA but in the entire world. I love this man, and reading his biography sort of helps me solve my own life problems. My life has been really tough for the last few years. I have been going through a really depressing time and have tried all possible ways to escape from it. Even though I fought back so hard, my third semester of college became a disaster and sort of risked my whole career. Moreover, I never give up. The next semester, I came back with a disciplined and trained mindset, regardless of all the obstacles I had, and passed the classes with good grades. Still, I’m fighting hard and keeping developing and training myself to be tougher and more disciplined. My biggest issue with writing is procrastination (I probably need to avoid perfectionism; I’m too afraid to start). Moreover, I’m a dreamer, and all of those dreams stop me from giving up and keep telling me, ‘Stay with me, stay with me, stay with me’. In the end, I really enjoyed recent classes, especially having some familiarity among other classmates and the passionate and optimistic teaching strategy of Prof. Bubrow, and I look forward to having a great and exciting semester with Prof. Adam and all the optimistic classmates in the class. — Tamim Uddin.