Our project involved addressing the issue of drug abuse and drug prevention in society. Our group overall was able to work cooperatively and efficiently to complete our project for LDS. We had some difficulties where we could not always meet at the time we agreed on but the job was completed in the end. When we met up, the meetings were brief because we would just check up to make sure the project was running along smoothly. I assigned everyone individual parts to work on that would be incorporated into the slides. I had the part of providing the background on the history of drugs and discuss about how drug abuse is a very huge social problem today. Michael had the part of making a marketing campaign outline on how we would promote awareness to our issue. Wendy had to find statistics on how many were really affected by drug addiction and drug abuse. Yong bin was assigned the part of finding how much it would cost to advertise our problem at hand. When we met up to discuss about the ideas for our project, we did not exactly agree on everything but we compromised our ideas in our presentation. Sometimes I did not understand what exactly the others in the group were trying to portray, meaning what message they wanted to express so I tried to work with them in order to have a clearer message be shown in the project. After everyone put their contributions in the slides, I edited the slide to make it look more appealing with a theme of colors and pictures. With our project about drug abuse and drug prevention, we did not exactly interact with a wider group of people or interact with others in different ways. If we decided to interview different people to survey them and see how many people on campus engaged in drug abuse, then we would have interacted with them in this way, but we chose to not go on this route. In the end, I would say the project was easily done between everyone and we distributed the work evenly to an extent.

I recently attended the connect event that was the Spelling Bee, which was also a battle between the undergraduate colleges. I never had the experience of going to a spelling bee back when I was younger, so I thought maybe it would be fun to see what it was like this time around. It took place in the Student Activities Center’s auditorium. On stage, signs were set up to distinguish where each undergraduate college would be sitting. LDS was on the far right side from my point of view and we went last to spell because we had the lead in the battle already. We seemed to have the advantage because for LDS we had the full three people to take part in the spelling bee but other undergraduate colleges only had one of two people participating. This event connected me with other members of the Stony Brook community because when the person from the same undergraduate college as us would spell the word correctly, we would all cheer for him. It felt like everyone from LDS become one big family cheering on support for our representatives up there. I thought it was fun to sit there in anticipation, hoping that the other people would spell the word incorrectly, so that LDS was one-step closer to winning the whole competition itself. I met some new people while I was there because where I happened to sit was where other people that are a part of LDS were sitting. We all bonded and united to support the people up there representing us in this battle. It was an intense, close battle because we almost got 1st place but sadly we ended up getting 2nd place. Overall, it was fun to watch the battle occur.
I can think of several ways to use this connection in the future. The people I met were very friendly and I felt this event brought everyone from LDS closer. In the future, hopefully we would get to know each other more and we can hang out together and potentially help each other in our courses if they happen to be in the same classes as me. It is always beneficial to meet new people because you never know they could turn out to become good friends of yours. These connections can be used to help me in the future because they could give me advice on certain classes they have taken that I will need to take later on and we can work in study groups together. Connecting with others is important to my success because we can support each other. If you ever felt down about something like your grades or something about the class your taking, your connections with your friends can help bring you up into a more happy, positive mood. In addition, in the future, sometimes the connections you make now can help you greatly. You never know if one day, your friend because successful and a recommendation from them can land you the job you wanted and needed. Friends are always there to help you and give you advice whenever you need it, so I think these connections you make are important for success in school.