Autobiographical writing exercises college

Good evening to everyone on this sub, I’d like to start off by saying I apologize if I’ve put this in the wrong place, but I feel as though many people here will have much more life experience and wisdom than myself on this topic, so here goes nothing.
P.S. This is going to be long as fuck so I apologize in advance lol.
I’ll start this off by giving a brief profile: I am 17 years old and about to graduate in a few weeks. My last long-term relationship ran from March ‘22-August ‘22 and it was not until about four months ago that I decided I was “over it” (I speculate I may have held limerence towards that person as well). In that time I developed an addiction to weed (daily use started in July-ish) that still runs to this day, for a multitude of different reasons, that relationship included. I’ve experienced most of the negative side effects of that addiction, and although I am still dependent on it, I am in a much more manageable state than I once was (I was smoking 2-3 times a day as a junior in HS). In the time following me and that persons separation I felt lonely often and had a hard time being able to validate myself. It’s almost important to mention that my home life is not the smoothest that it’s ever been, and the combination of stress from that, school, and this big transition Im about to experience has taken a large toll on my life in the last 3 months or so.
So to my present situation. I met a girl at a birthday party my friend of mine was hosting (3 and a half months ago), and I quickly spotted her and decided I wanted to try and talk to her. Before even doing so, my friends mother and another friend of mine had encouraged me to talk to her because “we would be good together” (they both know her much better than me). To sum it up, it was not long before we ran off from the party, went on a long walk and talked for over an hour, and opting to go for ANOTHER shortly after, to which I kissed her for a long time. She had proclaimed that she sensed a real connection between us and seemed concerned about seeing me again, so I decided to keep things going because I had not felt this excited or connected to someone since my last partner. It’s important to note that she lives in a town about 35 minutes away, and I don’t currently have a car, so there is an obvious distance. The next week I went to her friends birthday party in her town and it went even better than the weekend prior, we once again separated ourselves from the party and got more intimate than the weekend prior. I ended up telling her a lot of the burdens in my life and it was the first time I had felt heard, you guessed it, since my previous partner. That night ended with more intimacy and her driving me home at 6 in the morning, and I thought about this night non-stop for probably 2 months. After that I was under the impression that we were seeing each other until she silently pulled away and I was unsure why. Radio silence for about a week. I was in the process of trying to accept this when we coincidentally ended up at a friends house at the same time and ended up talking things over (about 2 months after initially meeting her). Long story short, I forgave her and welcomed her back into my life. This is when the daydreaming of “what could be” and the perfect fantasy started again, except this time with a more positive outlook. About a week and a half later I called her and asked her to be my date to prom, which she happily agreed to. There was about 3 and a half weeks between then and my prom, which was this past Saturday. About 2 weeks ago she drunkenly called me and apologized for her pulling away and revealed how much it was bothering her, but I tried my best to reassure her that I had moved on and only saw that as a moment in time. The beginning part went well but rendered slightly awkward (I feel like mutual sobriety contributed to this), but the after party was when things took off. She told me that she wanted to go on another walk with me at some point that night, which made me happy because I knew what I was going to experience. This time was different than the first; there was an unspoken level of comfortablility she revealed only around me, and she told me how she wanted me to visit her in college and how she was disappointed we didn’t have the time to develop a relationship, and how long distance would probably be difficult. I asked her why she felt this level of comfortability with me, and she said it was because “she could tell I was a good person with only good intentions, and would never do anything to hurt her.” None of this was discussed extensively but rather we focused on trying to enjoy each others company, when I asked her if I could kiss her again. She told me that she wanted to ask but she felt anxious to or something like that. We spent a lot of time on that walk being intimate, into the rest of the party at my friend’s house at times we had unintentionally secluded ourselves (going to get another drink, etc). She stayed the night and I walked her to her car the next morning, and she told me she would see me again because she still has a sweatshirt of mine, I gave her a long hug and we went our separate ways. It’s important to note that she has admitted to being a bad texter, and that she did not believe in the superficiality of developing a relationship over Snapchat (our main form of communication), which is something I’ve aligned with since before meeting her. And we were both drunk 3 of the 4 times I saw her. I am also now realizing we don’t really address these moments in sobriety which raises concern to me. In the times between seeing her, we have small conversations here and there and Snap throughout the day. Needless to say, I still think a lot about what it would “be like” to be in a relationship with her and see her more often, and find myself disappointed when I don’t hear from her for a while. But at the smallest sign of validity, it entirely flips.
I want to know if this is something that I should address with her, as I want to have a manageable relationship with her in whatever aspect that may be. I also want to source more validation from other aspects of my life besides her. I already exercise about 4-5 times a week and that has kept me in line more than if I wasn’t, but I feel as though I need to do something about this directly in order to make progress. Again, I apologize for making this so fucking long lmao and if you read this all you are amazing. Any input, whether I want or don’t want to hear it, is fully welcomed.

I am a 2025, and not applying yet. My teacher said they were willing to write a rec letter for me. I haven’t requested one yet, so I don’t know much about it.
My question is on the “Select the recommendation request type.” I am not applying to any colleges yet, but it says I need to choose one. So I just put a random college I would be interested in. So I’m wondering if I request this recommendation letter right now and it sends to that one college, can I still send it to other colleges in the future (when I actually start applying to colleges)?

Senior year of college, in a specifically high level, required English major class.
So, only the furthest along on the English major track.
We had our final resesrch essay, which was like 30% of the grade. I'd say we all tried really hard obviously and are very familiar with the expectations. The class was probably about 25 folks big.
Like, working for a week or so and getting everything together and coherent and whatnot.
I had one friend in the class that was really confident. He put tons of hours of work, research and writing and revising. And he was a smart guy, always had good insight in class, good responses, in my opinion.
We turned in our essays and waited for them to be graded.
The day arrives when we get them back, at the end of class.
We shared our grades and congratulated each other.
Except my one friend.
He was sitting at his table and kind of ignoring everyone and looked super upset.
We go over and ask what he got, and he just kind of shook his head and looked defeated.
He got a 34%.
At the top of the page, in red pen, was "Is English your first language?"
And it was marked with red pen aggressively, like comments everywhere, things struck out, his thesis statement had an actual line through the whole thing.
I know for a fact this guy took his time working on it, like probably over the course of weeks, and he was an advanced English major like the rest of us.
He was defeated. Absolutely decimated.
We all encouraged him to go to the professor and ask what happened, and if he could revise for a better grade, but the hurt from this guy was intense.
I don't think I've ever felt worse for somebody academically.
"Is English your first language?"
Yikes, dude. I'd have cried.

This year started off great. I finished a chapter I found myself stuck on and I ended up being pretty satisfied with it. Fast forward to now, nearly 6 months later, And I have made ZERO progress since then.
Let me start from the beginning. I started writing my fantasy novel back in my last year of high school as a project to turn in. It was pretty ambitious. So ambitious that I ended up having to essentially rush the ending and tbh I hate what I wrote back then. Since then I've kept writing (obviously cutting out that terrible ending), working on that same novel. I've been doing this for 3-4 years now. I entered college, had to take a break from writing because of how stressful that mess was. Dropped out, started writing again. Fast forward to now, and I feel so horrendously stuck on what is basically my first draft. I finished the last chapter back in January, and I've yet to write anything else since then because I just hate everything I write. ALL of it feels like trash. I don't even know how many times I've restarted the current chapter because I never like how it turns out. A part of me almost wants to just start over entirely... Any tips or ideas on what I should do? :(

I (22F) feel like I can’t talk to anyone about this bc no one in my family seems to gaf that my sister (18F) is distancing herself from the family. So imma just rant and hope someone can relate.
Anyway, I hardly talk to my younger sister even though we live in the same house because when I do try to talk to her, she seems annoyed and only answers in a monotone voice like she wants the conversation to be over asap. We used to be close when we were younger, but after I came back from college, she’s gotten rude, snappy, and disrespectful. I ask one simple request I.e take out your wet clothes from the washer and she gets all snappy and is like “I don’t have time” and then walks away.
She’s planning this graduation dinner party for her and her friends but hardly gives a fuck whether her family comes or not. When I confronted her and expressed that I felt hurt for not getting an invite to her dinner party, she said “you can come if you want” and didn’t really say much more than that. I’m not the only one she treats this way, but I seem to be the one most affected by it. My brother and mother are writing it off as her being a teenager and that I just need to wait it out, but idk, I really can’t deal with anymore of this.
I don’t understand what happened or why she’s acting like this towards me. I feel like I’m a terrible sister

I just completed my first semester at UMD as a transfer. I was an engineering major at my previous university but decided to transfer into UMD undecided since I still needed to complete some prereqs before applying for the engr school here. I already took Chem at my previous college and got a B but unfortunately took my first attempt of physics there but withdrew because I was taking too many classes at that time. This semester at Umd I took Math141 (Calc 2) and Phys161 and got an A in Calc but sadly a C in physics. The engr school requires atleast a B- in Calc 2, a B- in physics, and a C+ in Chem. You’re also only allowed to retake one of those 3 classes and a W counts as an attempt. This means I already used the max amount of retakes but it’s unfair that a W still counts as an attempt. I don’t really know what to do at this point because I was hoping to apply for the Engr school for next sem but I think my chances of getting in are slim to none now. Should I take Physics over the summer and apply after those grades come out? Could I write a good appeal letter about my situation and get in maybe? Anything helps. Thanks.

Over 700m volume today after dropping 65% upon news dropping about earnings and more importantly, a new offering for certain institutional investors of 420 million shares at a price of $0.052. Current price as of this writing is 0.068.
They’re also selling those investors warrants to buy 420 million shares at an exercise price of $0.10.
Book value of 0.13 Price to sales ratio of 0.25 After cash raised have estimated 3x cash vs market cap
Utilizing A.I. in the 42 billion dollar scrap metal market
Steel and Cooper markets booming
Below is more DD gathered from other users;
Expected revenues exceeding $40 million during the year ended December 31, 2024.
Company CEO Exchanges $10 Million in Debt into Shares of Series D Preferred
Company has improved its balance sheet by $27 million over the past 90 days
Chairman and CEO has converted all $17.22 million of his debt into equity
Company bolsters balance sheet with $5.25 million capital infusion
Reduced more 318M notes
Greenwave recently received notification from Dominion Energy that its second automotive shredder is scheduled to be connected to the power grid no later than April 9, 2024, and will commence operations shortly thereafter
Check sec fillings dates from 4/25/25 to today: take a look who was loading.
This thing could see some very nice gains tomorrow, looking to get back into the teens very quickly.

Cross-posted from my old account
I'm an abuser. I broke her.
I met my friend in August of 2022. We met over a fandom for a YouTuber we both liked, we'd talk, shade headcanons, write, and the like. She was wonderful. She was perfect, so sweet and kind, loving, caring, passionate.
In February of that same year I got on BC pills and it ruined me mentally. Threw me into the worst depression I've ever felt. I've never really gotten along with my peers, my parents told me I'd feel better when I'm in college and I just need to find a purpose, my doctor just threw more pills that didn't even work at me. Only she could save me. I told her everything. Piling up thought after thought onto her, using her like a therapist. Everything felt better when I had her attention and validation, when I was with her, I felt so seen and heard and loved. Basically, I used her for attention and validation. Over. And over. And over. For months. I refused to seek therapy because I was scared a therapist would say nothing is wrong, I'm just too sensitive, or I'm making it up. I was terrified that I'd have official, professional confirmation that I'm just a bad person, a drama queen, and I'm an attention seeker. (And that's exactly what ended up happening around a year later, a therapist told me I'm normal, so I have no mental issues at play that could've caused any of this.)
Around that time I started cutting and I'd always tell her about it, always wanting her sympathy, her pity. She said she didn't want to hear about it, but I pressed forward anyways. She said she didn't want to be a therapist, but I continued on. I never knew until later that she struggled with the same things and my actions made her relapse. I could have killed her with my actions. She could have gone too deep or starved too much, I could have killed her. I'm lucky she's even still alive. She was strong enough to never tell me any of this until nearly a year later meanwhile I told her about every tiny thing that happened to me.
I'm not good at controlling my emotions. Every little thing feels like the end of the world to me. Hell, today I cried and was shaking too much to do anything because I mixed up some chemicals and grabbed the wrong concentration and messed up a titration in chem and my lab partner was understandably upset at me. I cried to my friend over my Keurig breaking, over taco bell fucking up my order, cut myself over not knowing how to do math homework, that's the level of dramatic and fragile I am. And she, so patiently and lovingly, put up with all this shit. She was the only one who would. She felt like a perfect angel.
Of course I fell in love with her.
Something in my mind at some point, I don't know where, just seemed to break. I saw her as this absolutely perfect, flawless angel. Someone above me, someone above feeling the ways I do, someone so perfect she couldn't possibly be upset by me. So I put more and more on my angel. She can't feel bad, she's perfect. It's wrong, but that's how my mind was working. I still see her as someone so beautiful and amazing.
I professed my love to her. She didn't want it. But I pushed her on, continually telling her I loved her, over and over again professing my feelings and pretty much BEGGING for her to love me back. She didn't want it yet I pressed on, spamming her with love declarations at LEAST weekly, hoping that maybe someday she'd change her mind.
This went on for months. I wanted her to take care of me. I didn't want to get better because I liked things the way they were. The hurt, sad girl who everyone gives attention to became all I am and all I know about myself. She was my giver, my provider, all I needed in the world. I obsessed over her. I begged her to come let me live with her because I wanted her (I've never met her in real life, we only know each other online. I didn't even know what she looks like.) And I begged for her to come to me, I even looked at Amtrak between our cities so I could get to her. She didn't want me. I wanted her. I was addicted to her attention and her pity and would do ANYTHING to get a hit. I continued to tell her every little thing I felt, every little thing I did. I needed her attention and validation to feel whole.
But that's not even the end of it. No, she was either perfect or evil to me. And whatever set me to treating her like my perfect savior angel, it all came crashing back down in reverse. All over YouTube drama. The moment she did something I didn't perceive as perfect, I snapped. That YouTube channel we both like had been called out for abuse of people behind the scenes and I said it was unacceptable to keep watching and giving exposure to them, she said I should just let people enjoy things. I made an angry post about how everyone who liked that channel was enabling the abuse, got banned from the community, and I was desperate to come back. They were my only friends.
I made an alt account to pretty much stalk my angel, I was jealous and controlling and paranoid over her finding someone better than me and leaving me now that she was upset at me. I joined back in the servers I wasn't allowed in. I listened in to a call she was in. At the same time, I was messaging her on my main account, pretty much yelling at her about how she's funding and platforming an abuser. On my alt, I would act all sweet, I knew my relationship with her was already ruined so I thought if I became someone else, someone better, someone ideal, she'd love me.
This was the end for us. She found me out and completely cut me off, then later I was sent a document detailing everything I've done and that I abused her, broke her mentally, and made it so she can't trust anyone anymore. That I relapsed her back into her old ways, that I gave her trauma and abused her kindness.
I don't know if I can ever be redeemed. Abusers are the lowest of scum, after all. I don't know if I should continue living or if I should just end it so nobody can ever be hurt by me again. I feel I deserve to suffer and to rot, that I'm not worth the dirt I step on. I hope that she can be happy again someday. I hope that I'm never happy again. Maybe that way, more happiness will be left in the world for her.

My dream notebook
11 x 8.5 sized paper 100 gsm paper Acid free paper College rule paper 120 pages not 60 page counting front and back Hard cover Dual spiral not to big 360 degree rotation The top of each page should have a number A table on context at the start I would be using the frixon pens, maybe highlighters
Here is the thing that bugs me. This is my math notebook and the style of how I write often interferes with the line making it look messy. I often like to write big but sometimes I want to write small. That’s why I’m thinking of blank paper so I can show my ideas better. But I need lines to write straight because I have bad handwriting. If I got the blank paper I could buy a stamp for graphs which would be nice. Some of the things I said prior you can’t really do with blank paper or would be much harder.
Comments, concerns, ideas, products to solve problem would be appreciated

Time to whine, sorry in advance.
Is anyone else starting to feel like there is not much point anymore? It feels like even though I'm pushing and advancing the goal posts just get moved to an entirely different field... And then they change the sport.
What's the point anymore? Oh, you're making more than your parents? What's the problem then? Well, I didn't get to buy a home 30 years ago when I could make minimal money and keep my mortgage payments. Oh yea and it takes both of us to work to make that happen. No one is home watching the kids, spending the day tidying up or home making ... We're at work and then come home and try to be better parents than ours were.
What's the point? Hard work has zero routes guaranteed success. I can bust my ass all day long but if there's no room to advance or no budget to get a raise I get nothing. I wonder why there's no room or budget? Could it be the upper end of management is past typical retirement age with all time high salaries accruing more and more wealth?
What's the point? The American dream is anyone can make a life for themselves, an equal opportunity to succeed. Is that really true? I come up with a great idea, I put all my capital into it and I venture out into the entrepreneur world only to get my idea stolen by Amazon and quickly put out of business. I get one shot at this. That's not equal at all, as I get one dart throw and wealthy can just throw unlimited dart throws until one hits a bullseye and then they can write some bullshit article about persistence and hard work.
What's the point? Go to college, that's how you make money. Education is so important... Take on these loans it won't matter. Also, we now don't like that woke ideology and we're literally banning books like some fucking post apocalypse the giver bullshit, suggesting women cannot decide what to do with their bodies, and have not argued about politics for what the ideals are in a decade... Not that it matters since there are so few people in our government that can understand what today is really like... Or not click phishing emails for that matter.
What's the point? I watch my youngest child grow up and spend most of my time away from her, catching up on chores and errands, and stressing than I do quality time with her. The taxes I pay get cut for her education or to tax breaks for companies.
I'm struggling to see the point. This is not like an I'm giving up and checking out thing at all. I've been fortunate enough to have access to therapy (wtf why is it so expensive). This is more of a general apathy and I can't really care about most shit anymore thing.
Thanks for letting me rant.

Hi!
New to this, but I watched The Idea of You and decided I'm going to try my luck with older women. I've been on dating sites before and noticed I'll have women reach out to me every once in awhile, but now I'm looking! Open to online but also interested in meeting in person.
Me: 5'10. Brown hair, eyes and a beard. Fit. Educated. Former college athlete. Eagle Scout.
Hobbies: Exploring thr outdoors, paddleboarding, skiing, snowshoeing, gardening, cooking, reading, writing.
You: Fit, kind, adventurous, mature, emotionally intelligent, playful, stable.

Hi there! I'm an incoming freshman for the honors college, and I'm planning on majoring in finance. I have a few questions about choosing courses:

1. I have above the 45 max credits for AP courses. I'm predicting a 4 or 5 on calc BC, micro, and macro. I already have a 5 for calc AB. Should I use those credits and get out of ECO2013, ECO2023, MAC2311 and MAC2312 (all critical tracking)? Or should I retake some of those courses instead? (side note: I think if I use those credits, I'll still have enough to cover most of my gen ed requirements for other subjects)
   
2. If I choose to skip the four courses above, the only two critical tracking courses left that don't require sophomore standing are STA2023 and CGS2531 (unless I take MAC2233 or MAC2234, which I rlly don't want to do... or should I take those???) I know for each semester I have to take 2 courses, but that means that for spring semester I won't have any more critical tracking courses to take! Is there some way I can request to take a sophomore standing class?
   
3. I'm also in the honors college. Are the (un)common reads/writes classes worth it? Also how likely am I to get a quest 1 honors section in the fall semester (I'm not part of the research program).
   

Sorry I know it's a lot but I would really appreciate any advice!

A story I might let go, or not. A story that would make you understand why I am who I am. If God think this is the way I can move forward from it, I will tell, I will send it, I will print it, I will let go of this fear, I will not hide and silenced anymore.
I want to have one last cry about this, I wanna move on now, I don't want this to kept haunting me anymore. I don't wanna kept coming back to this place. I want to actually heal this time.
I was abused. Back when I(Around 9 or below years old) was too young to know anything, I was sexually abused and manipulated. The twist is that those people started telling people about it, and making it looked like I want it and the one who started it, when I don't even know what is happening or what happened as a young boy. Like what is sex to me at that time? I don't know.
I was talked by my parents about it, I don't think I said anything, as I really don't know at that time what was happening, all I could remember is that I was stitting at our bedroom both of them infront of me, and they said "You should never do that again." In a calm way, maybe something the lines of it is wrong. And still, I don't know what was happening.
It got out into our whole barangay, I would hear the adults gossiping while I was playing at the street, heard it from older kids gossiping, confronted and bullied by it by other kids, even the close ones switched side as they found out. And the abusers? got multiplied. Like I have this sort of aura that, says they are allowed to do it. That even if I was told I should not be their, what can I do at that time? who can I run to? They already think it was my fault.
Oh God, you should've seen their eyes, while growing up, starting to realized what their words mean, what is sex, what it means to let others touch you and touch someone else. How they looked at me, while buying stuffs at a sari-sari store or playing outside, some of the kids at school who knew or heard it from someone else. (Or maybe it was myself, that exaggerate how they looked at me everytime they see me, and learning what happened meant).
School, yes, I don't wanna go to that place everyday. Only to find myself getting bullied or threathened by other kids who knew my story, but I can't really skip my school, my parents made sure that I finish it, and me not saying anything, a total silence everytime they asked why I don't wanna go (I know I really made it hard for them at this point, and I am really sorry and thankful for their hardship, just to make me finish school). So It became my goal before Hishschool, to enter a school that no one knew me, or near my home.
And I did it, I entered hishchool, and no one knew me from Elementary days. I thought it was gonna be okay at that point, but no. That is when the time you'll figure out who you are really attracted to, in which I know I am not normal anymore,and I already know at a young age that what I'll become is wrong, it was already been encoded to me before I understand it, before I become who I am, someone else is already encoded to me. And the past? it haunted me everyday, dreaded by the thought that maybe tomorrow someone will know all about me, and the whole school will know. That whatever I am building on highschool would crumble by my past.
So, yes, I tried, I tried to live up to that who I am that will be accepted. Got lost on it, I even really believed that the me that should be is wrong, no one is needed to say that to me anymore, I am already the one saying it to myself at this point. It got worse and worse, I made friends (I am very thankful to my hishchool classmates) and my family is okay about the me I am showing, but I am not really okay with it. Cause I know deep inside, that the one they love is not real, and this time it is not their fault, I am the only one making it, at this point.
I am still afraid of my past, I can't open up, I can't let anyone know, I don't wanna ruin what I have, hide, be silent, keep it inside... Everyday, was just like that, till I myself, neglected who I really am. I don't accept me, I can't change I tried, I can't accept this... A constant inside battles everyday and every sleepless nights...
Then I finished highschool, I have no plans what's next, I am really tired at this point, hopeless, I don't wanna continue anymore, I don't wanna interact with anyone anymore, I don't wanna build anything anymore, I just wanna be at my room, hide, get what little of this life could offer, at my room I don't have to pretend, I don't have to be so dishonest with anyone. Here, I can be anyone I want without hurting or pretending to anyone.
Again it got worse, I can't stay at that room forever. And I lost a lot of time there, years. I don't know what to do anymore, my parents yes, I made it too hard for them, I really made it way too much for them to understand me, as I don't say anything, I can't say anything, I fear the thought of them finding out, I was afraid to be abandoned, I was afraid they'll never accept me.
So I entered college, in ~~~. No one knew me, no one will ever know my past, far away from anyone who might know my story. I got close to my classmates, too close, that I myself told them what is my story. I slowly became who want to be, the mind in which I am not afraid cause they accepted me for who I am, and I am very thankful. But yes, it is still there, my behaviour, encoded at the back of my mind, still have that engraved on me, that I am still afraid with strangers, I still can't look in their eyes, afraid for someone else seeing me. I kept changing it, I kept improving myself, I kept supporting myself on the inside, and I made progress, I know. Then college days, ended.
Time to go home. Hopeful for the changes I made, for the progress I did that only me knows, yes, I can go to places now, alone. Thinking, I am looking forward to try this when I go back to my hometown, hopefully I might do it this time. Reality came, I went home. It's still there, I can't go pass our front door, its hard to be seen, still. The thought that I will go outside alone, still there, same people, same place, still there. Each day, no one knew, I tried to go out alone, but my feet won't let me do it, it's still there, I am still afraid or what, my hope seems like a candle that time that slowly, burned out. Then the same old me came back, Always in my room, Days, Weeks, Years passed again.
This time, I don't want it anymore really, I don't really want to continue anymore, each day thoughts of just going away, end this all would come. I tried once again, I went away my hometown again, one more try, another candle, let's light it up one more time...
But this time, I had to face strangers... This time I am really alone... Voices are still there, keeps getting louder and louder each day still no progress on myself, progress I did at college days seemed to have gone... "Oh God, I wanna end this, I don't see the point of doing all of this now, I want this to end now, I can't do it, I can't do it anymore... you know I tried but, I am tired of this now." days just went with that voice... There are days that I don't really feel safe anymore with myself.
Those days was the hard one, to feel not safe even to yourself, it was beyond painful. To be unsafe to the person you should be safe... It was different, like I am betraying myself, that even to myself I can't count on him. But I just kept convincing myself that there's no good to think of it that way. Til, I ended up writing this at the most hard moment of my life.
So why I am writing this? I used to not hate anyone. I just kept saying to myself that those people, I will let it to God what will happen to them. I grow up thinking I should never hate, cause hate is just too much to bare for so long, it will only hurt me more. So I kept saying to myself to let it all go, to let everythinf that hurts go, and I should just continue with what I need to do to myself. But at the moment I wanna end it all, it came to me... for the first time, it came to me...
WHY I should be the one to feel guilt and shame? WHY I should be the one to hide and silenced? WHY I should be the one afraid and suffering? WHY I should be the one crying and slowly dying? WHY I should be the one haunted and dreading? It came to me, NO! I can't end this life like this! I can't, for 29 years, NO, I can't end this life like this! NO! I CAN'T END THIS LIFE LIKE THIS!
I want to be an open book now, I wanna let this go and heal and move forward now. I want it to end haunting me. I won't let it again. But to those who love me, especially family, I really can't do it alone, for 29years I tried to do it alone, I can't. I am very sorry for lying who I am or not even saying anything or not opening up to this point. So I admit, I am GAY, and all the story I said here, is the side of my story of what happened, and I need help. I really need help, I can't do this two image of me anymore, alone. I don't wanna be afraid anymore of losing anyone just because I am not true to myself and anyone, I need help. So I wanna ask you, after all I have said, would you still accept me? would you be willing to support me on this? I need it as I can't do it alone, not anymore, I tried.
I wanna find reason why I am doing this now, cause if the one I love doesn't accept me anymore, I don't think I will be able to continue anymore. I can't run anymore, I lost track now why I am fighting alone, and I need you. Will you help me?

I'm job hunting right now, and I'm trying hard to figure out a position that will actually feel fulfilling/wont be so hard to force myself out of bed for every day. I thought it might be helpful for myself to list out my interests/wants, and then I realised maybe the larger pool of people on reddit might have some ideas on positions or industries that I should look into, based on the list I've made.
So please, if the list below sparks any ideas at all of positions that might fit my personality, I would really appreciate any and all input!! Thank you!!
I like:

• Working alone
• Organising things
• Cataloging/list writing/putting information into some sort of organisation
• Restoring things (example: I am paint stripping my apartment which was built in the 40's, removing approximately 70 years of piled on 'landlord special' coats of paint, and re-painting based on the colour I can see it had originally been painted under all the other coats, in an effort to restore it to how it looked when it had been built. I also enjoy cleaning/restoring old or very dirty or damaged items.)
• Thrift stores/vintage or antique stores/flea markets
• Art/art galleries
• Fashion (I went to college for fashion design, so I know how to design/sew/alteetc. I have worked in film costuming, and sewing)
• Large scale projects (I've worked in set decoration and visual merchandising and I very much enjoyed building or decorating large displays, I spent a bit of time helping to organise an extremely messy set decoration warehouse, so I know I enjoy things that are physically large scale projects)
• 'Tedious' tasks (for example, my favourite task at a job I had was putting branding stickers on hundreds of paper bags/disposable containers, which other colleagues found pretty boring to do. Or in a film costume job I had I really enjoyed working through a very large backlog of stunt actors costumes, fixing all the rips and holes in them.)

Additional notes on my limitations:

• I don't currently have a drivers license or car, so if an industry absolutely requires you to have that, I probably can't pursue it right now, but I would still very much like to know about it as I intend to get a license/car as soon as I can possibly afford it. I do live right in the middle of Hollywood, in Los Angeles, so I have very easy access to a lot of public transportation options! So I can get around I just don't drive.

Hi, I am a sophomore in high school and am wondering if I am on track to get into a t10 university for premed (bio, neuro, or biochem). I am worried because of my relatively low UW gpa and because most asian males who get admitted to t10 unis usually have 4.0s while I will have a 3.89 when applying. This is not a shitpost 😭
Demographics: Asian male, no hooks
Household income: 400k+, going to pay full tuition
UW/W gpa: 3.89/5.45 (expected when applying to college)
ECs:

1. Started nonprofit that increases access to research opportunities for hs students in my city: Matched 30 hs students to undergrads to learn about research skills and develop a research poster in their area of interest, held workshops, developed an app to facilitate collaboration between hs students, fundraising a couple thousand dollars as scholarship money for a cumulative symposium where these hs students can showcase their work.
2. Student researcher at a surgical oncology lab at a top 5 med school (going to have done it for 4 years: Researched surgical techniques and will get co-authored on paper(s) along side surgical oncologists.
3. Play Tabla (indian percussion instrument) (going to have done it for 4 years): Took classes since I was in 1st grade, taught a group of 5 students the basics, played at different temples.
4. Volunteer Coordinator (and volunteer) for an Alzheimer's Care Home (going to have done it for 4 years): Increased number of volunteers by 300%, assisted in patient-care duties, helped feed patients, assisted patients through bingo games and art, set up an art gallery full of the art pieces produced by these patients over the course of 2 years with 40 attendees, learned the basics of Korean and Memoni languages to effectively communicate with certain patients. Will have 600 volunteer hours by the time of application
5. Orthodontic Assistant (going to have done it for all 4 summers): Shadowed a dentist and helped with miscellaneous stuff around the clinic.
6. Literature Review Lead at Cystic Fibrosis nonprofit (2 years): Led a team of 6 through weekly literature review meetings on prophylactic antibiotics in relation to cystic fibrosis. Was working on writing paper, facilitated the creation of 20 Cystic Fibrosis awareness posters, led 3 info sessions raising awareness for cystic fibrosis.

Honors/Awards (not many, rly have to work on this):
USABO semifinalist
HOSA ILC Qualifier
Am I on track to get into a t10 university? Stanford, Duke, or UPenn is the dream but I would love UC Berkeley or UCLA.
I am mainly concerned regarding my UW gpa and my awards so far. I was also wondering if a 1550+ SAT score will help make up for my relatively low UW gpa. I would greatly appreciate any advice on what I should focus on and try accomplishing in the summer. Thank you so much in advance for the advice!

I am a 20 year old female, diagnosed last year with memory loss after going through extensive testing.
I used to have an amazing memory and IQ- better than most of my peers to a point where I would impress them. 3 years ago, for an unexplained reason, my memory and IQ began to decline. As of last year it was tested and shown to be in the low range and now, it’s difficult to even recall my last thought.
I carry a notebook with me everywhere now to write every important thought because I will forget. My memory significantly impacts my work performance and relationships with others. I had to stop going to college because I can’t remember basic concepts in the lessons anymore.
I’m constantly going into thought loops and get borderline obsessive over random topics that in the end, meant nothing to me. I sometimes forget my coworker’s names. I zone out often. Sometimes my body seems like it forgets how to swallow even when I know I have to swallow my food or drink. Sometimes I forget to take a breath and I nearly choke. I get dizzy randomly and trip over nothing, but luckily I haven’t fallen so far. I forget what I’m thinking about in the middle of thinking. Very frustrating for me and everyone around me. I forget my appointments and miss them. I forget how much money I have and end up spending too much, thinking I had way more.
It’s difficult to write this because I’ve zoned out and forgot what my goal was behind this post like 5 times.
My neuropsychologist asked me (last year) if I hit my head really hard some years ago !!! I said no. I’m not sure why this is happening. Family history of cancer and brain tumors. Mother has memory problems too, not sure what it is and she’s 40.
Should I get re-evaluated from last year? Get accommodation at work for this condition? I don’t know what to do. This impacts every second of my life and it scares me.

I was a college rower, but because I had a good running test times, I walked on the cross country team my junior year when I was 20. I never had any running or exercise related injuries prior, and the only major difference in intensity was that i was increasing my running mileage on XC, and ran on my heels, not my toes (which I always did before, until someone told me it was bad form). About 6-8 weeks in my left knee started giving out. During my final race my coach told me that a reason my knee hurts is because it naturally turned inward, so he put tape to shift it to the center. I raced with the tape and felt less pain, but I could hardly stand up after I finished, and had issues walking for 3-4 weeks after.
I only did cross country for 3 months but the knee problems stayed from then on. I used to be able to run for miles with zero pain besides muscle fatigue. Now, if I run for more than 3 miles, the outer part of my left knee hurts immensely afterwards, to the point where it’s hard to manage stairs, walking, and for the first 2-3 days it’s even hard to fall asleep because it aches so much. Even on less intensive workouts, like a leisurely hike, I know my knee will give out and I’ll have to hobble on it if I’m walking for more than 2-3 hours. It’s so frustrating because I LOVE walking, hiking, and running and I’m not even physically worn out by the time my knee gives me issues. While stretching helps, I know it’s never completely alleviated the pain.
For now, I’ll stick to rowing because I know my knee won’t hurt doing it. But could chronic pain on the outer part of one knee point to a more specific issue? What can I do to relieve it, or was the damage done when I was in college?

I never thought id be writing this but im at my wits end with my parents especially my mom. I grew up with very traditional immigrant asian parents and they’re very loving but also emotionally abuse. Both me and my brother have realized that my parents was very racist, judgmental, homophobic, and many other things from a young age but always chose to ignore it as they only said things never really implied it to us. Growing up I reluctantly did everything they wanted me to do and act as well. I thought If I just did what they wanted they’ll eventually stop nagging and give boundaries. I was wrong. As I grow older it just got worse and worse. My dad has a very conservative ideology but has a bit of boundaries and will let you be as he is aware that its not the end of world. Although growing up we had a very rough history and our relationship isn’t the best. I am slightly closer to my mom although she even worse. My mom constanly nags and has no boundaries for me or my brother. They’re harder on me as I am female and need to be presentable so that a man will want me and take care of me. I however do not always meets the standard that mother wants. I dont do anything bad and go to school like im suppose to. I recently got admitted to pharmacy school in buffalo and am leaving in august. My mom use to always nag me about my weight really badly calling me fat daily or that she wishes ill die cause im just a fat loser or that im lucky im in America because in Asia I would just be shamed. Recently she stop nagging as I been going to the gym. I thought that she would stop emotionally abusing me, but now shell just get upset over tiny things. I would be eating and having a conversation with her and shell just blow up because I dont want to tie my hair up. Shell say no man would a nasty smelly women. I have tried to live to all her expectation thinking it will get better but ive realized it doesnt. She stressing about every little thing and is so judgmental to everyone its sickening. Everyone who doesnt uphold to her standard are just trashy people and below her. She also treats her mil my grandma terrible to the point where my grandma refuses to ask my mom for almost anything and will wait for me to help her. My mother expects me to marry a nice chinese man with a respectable job and has been pushing me to find one since i got into grad school, however im not sure I want to do that. I realized I liked girls at a young and consider myself bisexual as of now. I would never be able to tell my parents this and am fine with marrying a man. However I am not fine with marrying what they expect as this is the person I have to live with for the of MY life. They’ve also push my brother to do this as well and he has said to stop, they’ll stop pushing it but will still talk about it. My brother moved out after college and just avoids my parents as he also couldn’t stand my mom. Im also a bit more childish and care free and my parents hate that part of me. I guess depressed every time I think or even talk about my parents. My mom believe her ideology is right and what she does is okay thats what everyone else does. I want to cut my parents off but I need them finically and would to have parents in my life. Im not sure if I can continue to stay at home or even make it through the summer.What should I do?
PSA: every time I talk back to my mom rather its calmly or in a heated moment she just says I think like American and am just being an idiot.

I'm currently developing an idea for a game that has two major layers: a space shoot em up layer and a strategy layer.
In the strategy layer the player can harvest/mine raw resources, move them around by managing supply chains, craft intermediate products from recipes, and assemble major spaceship components into a completed drone that launches the shooter layer.
In the shmup layer the player plays a classic top down shoot em up with waves of progressively harder enemies. The player can loot the enemies and other rare resources but has limited inventory available and faces a risk/reward analysis for when to send the loot home and write off the expendable drone before it is destroyed by enemies that are too strong for the player.
As a solo indie dev I have some concerns with scope but I really like the idea of enabling the player to manage the pacing and excitement of the game by building and using the expendable spaceships in spurts of action. My major concern is developing the strategy layer to be an interesting and engaging experience. My main inspirations for it are Factorio and the Anno series which I have found to be amazing in terms of supply chain management but I'm hesitant to copy them too closely and have been hung up on trying to inject some originality into the design.
So my question is, what are some ideas for a supply chain management mechanic that captures the wonderful complexity of the double-sided belts, robotic arms, and train systems in Factorio and/or the exercise in spatial reasoning the Anno series brings to the table. Any tips, tricks, or feedback would be greatly appreciated, thank you.

I currently work in retail but they have cut hours drastically and won’t let me work more days. I am only out for a couple of months for college and I planned on working full time….what are some things I can do for money ? I tried surveys but they are so tedious and also online jobs too. I was thinking of also writing essays too but it’s hard since school is already out for most people. Any ideas?

So, I've been trying to lose weight for about two years and I feel like I've just gained instead of losing. I'm weight at 271 lbs and I'm a 20 year old 6ft 2in tall guy. I try to lose weight by exercising, like lifting weights, going on treadmills, walking and(sometimes) jogging/running. I tried to keep it consistent doing it every other day, but I would forget doing it one day and I'd just stop. I don't know why I do that, but I do. I tried making alarms and I'd still forget. Hell, I even bought Ring Fit Adventure on Switch to motivate me but that barely worked. With college and working I haven't really been able to find time, and when I do I just want to relax and play some video games or watch a movie. My diet has been pretty bad lately too, which isn't helping. This has been mentally draining because I want to be between 190-200 lbs because I feel like that is a healthy weight for me. But I keep forgetting to do it. Any advice of what I should do?

I saw someone else did something like this recently and thought that I might have something to add to the discussion to help people figure out whether they think this program is right for them, or for people currently in the program to help them plan out classes.
My background is very heavy in statistics and finance (I'm an actuary), so my grounding in calculus, statistics, linear algebra, and business topics was considerably better than most of the other people I interacted with in this program. Conversely, I'm sure my programming skills were probably about average or maybe a little bit below compared to someone with a more targeted background towards those skills.
I started in Fall of 2020 and just finished up this month, Spring 2024. I started out just taking one class a semester and never changed up that plan, would highly recommend doing the same if you're working full time alongside; there's no reason to rush this program. I got a 4.0 GPA overall, although I never really stressed that much about it and definitely did not shy away from "harder" classes in order to bolster GPA. I did this to learn, not to get good grades. The classes I took, in order (my memory of some of the earlier ones might be a bit jumbled as so much time has passed):

1. CSE 6040 - I mentioned how my programming background was weaker relative to my mathematical background. However, reflecting on my experience in this class, it was probably still pretty strong. This class is focused on generalized programming skills, you don't really get into the analytics and modeling that much; it's more of a primer on things like functions, recursion, computer memory management, etc. It's been a few years, but I don't remember struggling with this class at all, and most of the concepts covered (object oriented programming, things like byte encoding, hexadecimal forms, recursion, etc.) were things I was already familiar with in another programming language (this class was in Python) or was relatively easy to pick up. From what I remember, the assignments were auto-graded and you had unlimited attempts, not to mention the fact that most of the prompts were to produce some predetermined result... and, as long as you were able to verify that your code produced that result, you got full points. I didn't miss a single point in this entire class. I believe there were "final exams" which were really just timed window coding assignments much like the homework, and you could do the assignments at any point during a 4-day window or something like that.
2. ISYE 6501 - This class was R-based and focused on basic analytics models. The material was much more applied than 6040. Similarly, the material was not difficult, and I was familiar with a lot of the basic models already (such as GLMs) from having worked with them in my job. The grading was done on a peer-grading framework; based on who anonymously is assigned your homework to grade, you can get someone who's a stickler for every point on the guide, or people who are a bit more lenient. I never really worried much about how things were graded in this class; yeah, I did miss some points arbitrarily, but nothing that made that much of a difference. If you generally put in the work and understand the material, your peers will recognize that. I found this a bit more interesting than 6040 because, rather than a deterministic "right answer", there was some more creativity implied here to solve each problem. There was a final project for this class where you walked through a hypothetical analytics problem and explained how you would go about solving it. I found this an interesting thought exercise and enjoyed this class. The pacing felt a little fast, as you basically had an assignment due each week, but the assignments were small. Like 6040 I found this class to be quite easy but I didn't 100% it due to the peer grading thing.
3. MGT 8803 - I almost applied to be exempt from this class, as my background intersects a lot with the material. The accounting and finance modules for this class literally did not teach me anything new. Supply chain was new for me and I found it interesting. I'm trying to remember what the other module was. I think it was marketing? I didn't like it. Overall I found this class quite easy for the aforementioned reasons, however I've heard from a lot of the other folks without business backgrounds that this class was pretty tough so take my opinions with a grain of salt. Taking this in the summer cut out one of the modules, normally there are 5 but in Summer there are 4. I figured this made sense to take during the truncated semester because I was unlikely to cover that much new material, and it turns out I was right about that. Each module lasted 2 weeks (I think in a normal semester it lasts 3) and has a timed multiple-choice test at the end. A lot of people didn't like this format compared to ISYE 6501 and CSE 6040; I'm not really sure how else this material could've been covered. This class was OK, the material is not really that deep but it's a pretty good primer on a large number of business topics.
4. ISYE 6740 - The first class I took that was actually pretty challenging, which makes sense considering the first 3 courses were just the basic core. This is pretty much an intro to machine learning as a discipline, and the first time I remember digging into academic papers that discuss some machine learning topic and attempting to recreate the results (this is something we did a lot in the more advanced classes going forward and incidentally now that I have graduated is probably one of the best ways to go about learning a new topic). I remember this class as having a format similar to ISYE 6501/CSE6040 in that you had large programming assignments to do, as well as open-book "exams" which were really just timed programming assignments. Assignments are not auto-graded; TA's review each one and thus the assignments have much more of a focus on explaining your findings than producing the exact expected output (unlike 6040). Some of the theory questions have you applying complicated matrix algebra rules that I'm not surprised a lot of people struggled with. The TA responsiveness in this class was pretty good from what I remember, but your mileage may vary. I remember getting 3 weeks to do each assignment but I also remember not thinking that was a lot of time, these assignments are very extensive, have many parts, and take a long time to get through. Like with 6040 I ended up not missing a single point in this class but I did find it difficult and spent significantly more time working on it than in prior classes, probably 10-15 hrs a week, give or take.
5. ISYE 6644 - I was familiar with maybe 50% of the material we covered due to my extensive statistics background, however I was not aware of the exact mechanics of random number generation or the concept of a batched mean, for example. I remember this class having several "check your understanding" quizzes that focused on the mathematical foundations. Didn't struggle with this much in terms of difficulty and found the material very useful. Setting up custom simulation environments is very useful and arena is pretty cool even if it's unlikely you'll ever use it. Some assignments feature similar tools in Python (simpy). There might have been some coverage of R in this as well, or at least the accommodation for people that wanted to use it. There was a project for this class, but you didn't have to come up with the topic on your own, you could pick from a list, and you could do your project on your own if you wanted (which, given the option, was always the choice I made, due to the inherent randomness in picking the right members of a group). However you can do a group project if you want.
6. MGT 6203 - The first of the classes I took that required a group project. I recommend you are proactive in putting together groups in situations like these, posting threads on Ed/whatever the forum is as soon as the class begins. My group was alright; not everyone in it was great, but we had enough going overall to make up for the weaker group members. The project has some arbitrary guidelines from what I remember - you need to put together a midterm report and video presentation that is no more than ~2 minutes long or something like that (if it's 2:01 you get penalized) and the final report is 5 minutes or less, and everyone in the group needs to speak. I honestly don't remember much else about this class, it was pretty forgettable, but not horrible. Not overall that difficult, another business class so a lot of topics I was already familiar with, but there was more new here than in 8803.
7. CSE 6242 - Another class with a group project. Again, I was proactive, and again, overall, my group was... okay. Some people who were really good, some who were... not. This class is characterized by a lot of assignments that are autograded, like 6040, but the assignments are a bit more difficult. Overall not that difficult with the exception of the D3 assignment, but that's more due to the fact that I'm not really sure how the autograder works for that; it tries to determine based on some internal structure of your html code whether or not you're fulfilling the requirements. I got a perfect score on all of the assignments, and they give you the chance to score over 100% on I believe either assignment 1 or assignment 2. A lot of people bombed the D3 assignment (I think it's assignment 2) but still did well in the class because it's not that hard to do well on everything else, so keep that in mind. This class does a great job of exposing you to a lot of new technologies, but there isn't that much depth to it. That's not really the point of this kind of class though, it equips you with the tools to explore things deeper if you so choose.
8. ISYE 8803 - I was a big fan of this class. It's taught in MATLAB but you can use Python if you so choose, you'll see in reviews of this class that you should really just use MATLAB since a lot of the sample code etc. is not in other languages, so that's what I did. However, they must've recently added Python and R code for sample solutions, so feel free to use what you want. MATLAB was interesting, there were parts of one assignment I also used R for (grouped lasso in R is a lot more straightforward). This class is all about high dimensional data and representing it in a more simplified and comprehensive way, think about something like sonar which might have datapoints separated by milliseconds and thus a very dense representation of a signal captured over a short period of time. After ISYE 6740, I found this to be the class that taught me the most up to this point.
9. CS 7642 - Taking this class in summer is kind of rough. There's 6 homework assignments that are autograded, similar format to CSE 6040. There are 3 projects which are much larger programming assignments for which you'll write papers explaining methodology, results, etc. These projects take a while, particularly project 3. I did well on projects 1 and 2 and decently on 3, although I spent the most time on 3 by far; it involves reinforcement learning to simulate a soccer environment and train agents how to play against an AI developed externally. The AI baselines are hard to beat, and I didn't manage to beat them, but I wrote a decent paper explaining what I did. The final exam for this class should be dropped as it doesn't add value to the class, people regularly score extremely low on it, the average score in the class was something like a 45%. I scored a bit lower than average but still got an A in the class because it was heavily curved. Reinforcement learning is a very interesting topic, though, and I would highly recommend this class as a primer on the material. It's probably a good idea not to take it in the summer, though.
10. CS 7643 - This class was pretty difficult but I still think 6740 was tougher. The material is extremely dense. There are parts of programming assignments that are autograded, but also short answer portions that are reviewed by TAs. Grading on those were pretty subjective. This is the only class I can remember really needing to discuss things with TAs to understand what was being asked a little better. Unfortunately, the TAs in the semester I took this weren't the best. They seemed more concerned with unintentionally giving away a bit too much information in any of their responses. I can understand this, but it came off as intentionally opaque most of the time. There was a group project for this course as well, and my group was excellent, probably the best experience I had with a group in this program. I can imagine how much this course would've sucked if I would've had a mediocre/bad group. Based on discussions with my group, some of the grading seemed highly arbitrary, with some TAs grading similar responses to the same question differently. Like I said above, though, I never really worried about this. I never once in this program ever disputed a grade, and I continued with that in this class as well.
11. CSE 6748 - Practicum and final class. For this class you get to choose between a number of pre-determined Georgia Tech sponsors, or form your own project for your own employesome external entity. It was a lot more work to do this, so I just went with one of the pre-determined GTech ones. I really enjoyed this one, I had constant communication with the sponsor as I developed my project and came up with something that I was quite proud of. I wanted to explore a natural language processing task, so I picked a project that I thought would allow me to do this, and was very satisfied with the result. There's a number of videos you have to watch that explain some overarching aspect of analytics that were pretty interesting as well, you can watch all of these in a single day and then focus on the project if you like. It's possible to finish the entire semester's work in just a few weeks, I was able to do the entire project and write the final paper in about a month's time, at which point I coordinated with the sponsor to tailor the work I did to a format that they would be able to implement for their business problem if they wanted to.

I can't comment on the job placement prospects of this program, as I just finished it and was actively employed the entire time I was in it. As an actuary there's not much this program does that my exam certification process didn't in terms of career prospects. However, it did position me much better within the context of the expanding role of data and analytics in insurance going forward, and also opens me up to similarly mathematical roles with a firmer grounding in big data and also some business elements (quantitative finance/data science roles). There were also things I learned in this program that I was able to apply directly to my day-to-day work. If you're considering this program, I would recommend you think about a few things:

1. I'm pretty shocked at how many people I saw during my program who didn't really think that much about why they're doing this. I get that the barrier to entry is low, but it's a serious commitment if you're actually trying to graduate. Most of the people who start this program don't finish, so consider whether you're ready to spend almost 4 years going to school part-time, or if you're able to double up on classes for some of the semesters. Most of the people I know in the program doubled up at least once, I never did but I was never in a hurry. If you must double up, don't make it your first semester. Dip your toe in the water, see how it is, and then reassess. But, above all else, think about why you want to do this, and use that as your guiding goal to bring you through to the end.
2. Something I tended to see pretty much without fail in most of my classes - a lot of the graduate students in this program spend way too much time worrying about minute, particular details that don't really matter. Maybe it was just my philosophy that I would probably never dispute a grade, or that I was never really that concerned with getting a perfect GPA, etc. but I was always marveling at what I saw asked in Ed posts. People would ask whether they could use a certain programming language for an assignment, what packages they were allowed to use, would post screenshots of bugs and ask for TA's to help walk them through it, etc. Generally, without fail, the TAs would respond along the lines of: use whatever programming language you want, as long as you can display your output/submit it in a way that we can verify by running ourselves, we'll make the effort; use the debugger to step through your code to find the problem; etc. Generally, in most cases, the assignments and questions are designed in a way to teach you something, to get you to realize/understand some pattern or data concept that has some underlying logic that makes sense. For example, the idea of saliency maps on image processing takes the 3-channel RGB color pixel shading representation of an image and condenses it into a single channel, and, as a result of that, loses some resolution in suggesting parts of the image driving a model result that might be different depending on the channel; i.e., an image with a very heavily blue-shaded part that detracts from a certain result, but with a red-shaded part somewhere else that increases the probability of the modeled result. This was part of a conceptual question on how saliency maps differed from other pixel influence attribution methods in Deep Learning, and is part of what you should logically understand since it reduces the channels of the image representation from 3 (R, G, B) to 1 (usually grayscale). I think people tend to run to the TA the second they have difficulty with something and don't stop for a second to think it through, one exercise I might recommend is to consider: if you ran into this problem out in the world and you didn't have a TA/managesome other authority figure to explain the answer to you, what do you think it might be? Does the answer even matter? If it still matters and you have no idea how to solve it, maybe then you can go to the TA.
3. In every single group project I worked on, we had an initial planning session where we determined the scope of what we wanted to do. For most of the projects, this was an essential deliverable in addition to the final paper. However, in almost every case, someone in the group was always playing some game of runaway scope where they kept on wanting to add methods/questions to exploration beyond what was initially planned in ways that I intuitively knew would be impossible to manage in just one semester. I often had to say something along the lines of "if we have time we'll do that" or "when we write up our paper, we can put that in the avenues for future exploration section" or something similar. It turns out that we never had time to look into these things, and our initial scope was usually well-defined considering the time we had. I'm not sure why this was always so front-and-center in my focus, maybe since I used to work in consulting and project budgeting/scoping is so unbelievably important in that context. Whatever the case may be, understand that you won't be able to change the world every time you do a project. Make some incremental improvement, reflect on the results, and then include some notes in a "potential avenues for future exploration" section. I was pretty surprised at how many people had so much trouble putting the pencils down at the end. I can practically guarantee that, for the classes where I did a project on my own, I probably did substantially less work than other individual groups for precisely this reason. In general, you probably don't have to do as much work as you think you do.

So, would I recommend the program overall? Absolutely. It's not perfect, I found some of the formats annoying - CS 7642 has no business having that final exam, it adds nothing to the class at all, is arbitrarily extremely difficult and the class is good enough and complete enough with the removal of that exam that its inclusion to me appears to be the result of some arbitrary quota somewhere. I also don't really like the group project format and profoundly disagree with the reasoning that GTech and most other academic institutions give as to why group projects are even good or necessary, however I do acknowledge that from a logistics and resource standpoint it's unmanageable to grade individual projects for every single person in a given class and group projects do decrease the number of papers that TAs will have to read. Considering the scale of what GTech has managed to do, and how many students enroll each year, I'm surprised the program is as well-managed as it is. Yes, it does require a lot of self-teaching, but in most cases you can actively engage with TAs multiple times a week if you're struggling with topics and from what I've seen they were very responsive.
Anyways just wanted to give my perspective as someone who just finished this program and still thinks it's worthwhile despite its flaws.