- All right. The first thing I'd like to say to that is that do we just need to think and get in that mindset of just going for it. Asking any professor that we're comfortable with that we've had a small relationship with even if you've never talked to the professor, just going into their office hours or meeting with them via Zoom and just having a small conversation and ending it with, "Would you be interested in writing a rec letter for me?" Like I said before professors at Brandeis wants to help you. They want to support you in anything. And if it means writing a rec letter and short notice sometimes they will, too. For me, I've always gone to my go-to professors and it's usually Professor Ferry and Professor Daniel Breen. And I formed a relationship with them over the years I've been at Brandeis. Yeah.

- I agree with Alejandra a hundred percent. But I also understand being really nervous before asking for a letter of recommendation. I actually asked Professor Gutchess for one and I remember being so nervous. My parents were like, "You've worked with her for two years! It's going to be okay." And I was really nervous, but I think like during COVID it's a little bit more challenging because you can't just walk-- go into the office hours. You kind of have to send like an initial email being like "Can we talk?" but like, not necessarily say that you want them to write a recommendation in the email cause you don't want to ask over email. So, and then that was a little challenging. Cause I was like, I don't want them to think it's like bad or like I'm quitting or something. Cause usually when you're like, can we talk? It's not like the nicest thing to say but I think the most important thing is make sure you have a relationship with the person because when you want a recommendation letter you want that person to know you really well. You don't want just like a generic letter that they write for everyone else. So I'd say like, try to develop those relationships with your Professors early on in your career and I promise they're really nice and they want to get to know you.

- So on the flip side of Emma, I actually enjoyed the online experience of COVID in terms of asking for letters of recommendation because I'm definitely not the one to physically go to office hours. I'm more the one to email you because it's just, to me it just seemed super awkward to go in person. But with everything being online and professors obviously have to adapt and they understand certain circumstances. I utilized office hours very much with my neuro courses, neurobio courses, neuropsych courses. And so via those office hours I really got to know professors. And, but before I never went to I used to never go to office hours. Cause I was like, what do I ask them? Like, what happens if there's a dull moment? It's like, how do I fill the space? And so before the office hours I used to write down like 10 questions and be like if there's a dull moment I'm going to ask one of these questions and definitely with the office hours you're often told like or sometimes it's like, you should ask questions about so you really get to know the professor, which of course you should get to know the professor, but it's like you can take it as personal as you want to go. So like I'm mainly focused in the office. I was not only just focused on just academic interests. So I asked them general things about the subject that clearly we were both interested in and via that I showed the professors that I was interested in what they had to say, I really liked the way they taught, It really inspired me. And so from there after finals week, I then sent an email basically breaking it down and I just directly asked them would they write me a letter of recommendation.