Dr. Giallorenzo,

On January 29th, we first started to work on our scientific articles and think about our first presentations. Though quite surprised that we were supposed to present only a week later, we assumed that all would work out in the end. Though as we worked through last week, we found the stress of this presentations quickly build up as we discovered the significant amount of time, work, and memorization that had to be put in. In addition to these presentations every night, mentor letters had to be consistently sent out, Toshiba writing and revisions had to be made daily, HW and tests from other courses had to be dealt with, and many individuals are also currently dealing with the stress of Medical Marvels and Lexus Eco finals.

Though we understand your concerns with finishing this presentation and moving on to the next, the majority of the students in this program are dealing with serious stress and lack of sleep to keep up with the workload you are presenting us and we think these presentations should really be postponed until either next week or the week after the break. Also, we have learned how previous years of students have had significantly more time to prepare and finish their presentations compared to us. The students of Sophomore Science Research program proposed a plan in order to have the most effective and beneficial timeline for presentations to occur. We believe that during this week, we could finish up our current presentations and you would be able to complete all one-on-one meetings with the rest of the individuals in your classes. The next week, which would be the week before break, we could choose to practice for presentations or preparing for our second one. This would then allow us to fully be prepared for our presentations through rigorous practice during this break. If you would want, we could also try to finish the second presentation over the break too. Then the week after the break we could officially start presentations and feel confident enough to give you our best work. After the first round of presentations, we could go straight into the next round, without consuming more days of class.

We want to emphasize that we are not trying to place blame whatsoever and completely understand that this is your first time teaching this challenging program. We just hope you understand that we are not trying to postpone this date for unfair reasons, but that many students are sincerely anxious for a presentation they are not ready for, even after hours of studying and editing it every night, and on top of their other work and responsibilities.

We would really appreciate your cooperation in this difficult matter,

Thank you for taking your time to read,

From the Sophomore Science Research Class of 2017-2018