- So, working in a lab is one of the couple things that I do on campus. I do have other jobs and other responsibilities as well. I work for admissions, I'm a UDR for HSSP and that's just a couple of them, um, and I'm also pre-med student, so I am taking a lot of intense courses. I think I've had a couple like organic chemistry freakouts in the lab. Um, so I think the most important part is, again, I spoke on this before, but asking for help, um, expressing to your PI and to your lab manager that you're overwhelmed, and just kind of navigating that together with them, um, again, even though you do have this responsibility of working in a research lab, which is a huge responsibility, and you still remember you are a college student, and there are people here to help you. You don't need to take it on all by yourself, so, really being open with the graduate student that I'm working with, kind of being like this week is really difficult. I have, like, I remember one week I had like three exams back to back and I was like, I don't know. And then she was literally like, you know what? Just take the week off. Just don't, just go take a break, take a rest, um. And also communicating with the other undergraduate students that are working in the lab as well. Um, I kind of feel like we have a really good dynamic in the lab, I remember I was doing transcripts with one of the undergraduate students and they were really overwhelmed one week and I was like, you know what, I'll cover yours, and I'll just do them for you this week 'cause I see that you're overwhelmed. And like, you don't necessarily need to tell, like, the manager and everything that you're covering them as long as they get done, done, and done properly. So it's kind of just like communicating with the lab. 'Cause you guys, at the end of the day, are kind of like, you guys are a team, you guys are all working together to get the research out of the lab and get everything done. So, you want to kind of be there for your team, and when someone in the team is struggling you kind of need to reach out, let your team know, so they're able to help you. So, I think it's really important to like, communicate, and that's a huge part of it.

- Um, I, there has been many times that I have been very overwhelmed while doing my research, um, but I can speak to most recently with the housing instability project that I'm working on, um, even just starting it Professor Ferry and I probably had many conversations navigating where I was going to, what I was going to end up focusing on, um, because I felt that research, although I felt that this was what I had to do for my senior year project write about and speak to my experiences, bring, as my, um, experiences were very like hard and I felt that the academia and the different, um, classes I've taken at Brandeis didn't speak to those experiences. Um, so then I thought I, personally, something very deep inside of me felt that academia wasn't going to be enough. I felt that, um, it doesn't speak to the personal, that research, more specifically research, doesn't have like an outcome, that's what I thought coming into it, um, that is giving back to my community. But Professor Ferry was very clear. They gave me different examples of research projects I could undergo, they helped me narrow down my project.