My advice to the incoming students is to be as productive as possible.

The Collaborative

Midterm will most likely be the hardest to accomplish due to the dependency of others. What

you will want to do is prioritize your grades first. Most likely your group mates will not want to

put in the same amount of work or communicate what needs to be done. I recommend that if you

want it bad enough, you need to take charge, talk to Dr Laing, and try your best. Dr Laing is a

very understanding teacher, as long as you show good intentions and hard work. I suggest

starting it as soon as possible and assign roles in the very beginning so it prevents you from

having to do the whole project. You have to be the biggest advocate for yourself, so if things are

not working out you need an alternative plan to present to Dr Laing. I remember in the beginning

I waited too long to communicate with my team members and people were already not

answering. I let many of them persuade me to give them more time and at the very last minute

they bailed. Luckily I had one partner as motivated as me. We ended up doing two all nighters to

finish a quality midterm project. However, a life lesson I learned is to not let people take

advantage of you, and to be as independent as possible. I wished I started on the project earlier

and trusted my gut. I was too scared to go to Dr Laing because I hate making excuses or

admitting that I failed. Dr Laing is the type of professor who genuinely cares. Do not be afraid to

ask for help and advice from Dr laing because she will help you. I know many professors “have

you are on your own” attitude but Dr laing is the few professors who care. I know many

professors would have just let me take the F, but she found a way for me to still pass her class if I

put in the work for the midterm. Asking for help on the midterm is a great way to ensure you are

on the right path. I also recommend asking for help for any of the assignments, because her

advice is actually useful.

 The next assignment is the most helpful assignment ever assigned to me. The morning

pages were therapeutic, long/tedious, hard, but worth it in every aspect. It was difficult to be able

to maintain the morning pages ao I wrote a lot of them late at night because I am not a morning

person. The goal however is to wake up at the same time and write pages on anything. The

hardest part was the discipline required to wake up every morning and think enough to write

three pages. Considering it was quarantine and nothing really happened, there was not a lot to

write about. I chose to start writing or finish a lot of them at night because then I had a day’s

worth of content. The best morning pages were the ones I did not think about and I just wrote. I

struggle with major long term depression and general anxiety disorder. Growing up, I could not

express my feelings because it was hard to put words to a mixture of feelings that were

exploding inside of me. FInding words to sort out and explain the chaos in my head was helpful.

Writing turned into a coping skill and became a way for me to vent. This assignment was very

difficult at first until I managed to stop overthinking the assignment. I recommend this

assignment as a way to vent, express feelings, thoughts, or ideas. If you do not let your mind

flow into paper it will be difficult to write three pages every morning. If you find a way to

connect to the assignment, then it will become easy and a positive thing in life.