Hello Concord family,

I hope everyone had a great October and Halloween this year. It has been awhile since my last update. I lost track of time, and didn’t realize it was November already! I didn’t do anything for Halloween this year, but it was fun watching friends dressed up in costume. The highlight of this month for me is Hmong Cultural day. Hmong Cultural day is an event we have every year on campus hosted by the Hmong student association.

I have to say this year has to be the toughest and challenging year for me. Taking three upper divison classes is harder than I expected. In my research, methods and design class, we are doing a literature review. This class is an intensive writing course, and I don’t have much experince on writing a literature review other than last year when I took my folklore class. Although I did do one last year, it was a lot different than how we are doing it in my current class. My favorite assingment so far in this class was doing an observation. I did a naturalistic obeservation at Starbucks to record the rudeness between employee and customers. It was very interesting to do something like this for the first time, and I actually enjoyed it. I am working hard to push through, and I have also talked to my professor whether or not it is a good choice to withdrawl from the class. Another class I did a similar observation in was child psychology. I recently did a project on observing infants. I was given permisson, along with other peers to observe at a children’s house. The purpose was mainly to observe the motor development in infants. I learned a lot of things I never knew or noticed about infants. Two main focus I did on was perception and sensation. This would probably be the best project I’ve done throughout my years in College.

Overall, this month has been great. Midterms had just finished last week. Some classes went well, and some didn’t. I will have to just do better next time. This is all I have for you all. Until next time!

-Keng Thao

Hello Concord family,

I hope everyone is doing well. It’s getting colder and actually feels like fall now. I can start layering up and tune in to wear Fall colors. I love the Fall season because the leaves are just beautiful when it changes colors.

Just last week, we had homecoming week. Every year for homecoming we have a lip synch battle, and this year I decided to be part of it. Our team known as Mavsians, won first place this school year! We also made it to the front page for school news. It was a moment where I can look back and be proud of something I thought I would never do again. Since it is my fourth year in college, It made me want to make it memorable.

So far school has been great. My professors are great, so that is a bonus this semester. I feel like I am doing a lot better this year with exams, and school work in general. I did surprisingly well on my first exam in research methods and design course. I also aced my mass communication exam which is an introdcution course. In my child psychology we are onto doing a project that involves going to a day care to observe infants. I find it exciting and look forward to it. There’s an online course I am taking and I did a presentation on whether ethnicity and race should be taught K-12 in the United States. I enjoy talking about views and opinions on this topic. As midterm is coming closer I am studying and staying on track more than I ever was. A goal I set this year is to prioritize my time more and study hard. I look forward to upcoming projects, exams and topics in my courses. I will update soon.

-Keng Thao

Hello Concord family,

Fall semester has already started, and I just finished my second week of school. It’s so weird to see school back to normal ever since the pandemic. Campus is fill with students, and more lively than before. I met a lot of new people that are transfer students. It’s great seeing new and old faces on campus. The university just finished building a starbuck, so it has been very hectic and busy with people ordering. There has also been new food replaced inside our food court. It’s great to see more variety of food on campus to eat. It really does feel like I am gaining the whole college expereince again.

I still can’t believe I am a senior now. This fall semester I am taking loads of classes and credits. Right now I am taking four classes. Three upper divison class and one introduction class to mass communication. Most of my upper divison classes are combined with graduate students, so I find that pretty cool. We haven’t learned much in my classes, but we have moved onto further projects and assignments. There is a lot of writing and reading. A class that interests me the me so far is child psychology. We talked about nature and nurture the first day of school in groups. This semester is moving pretty fast, and I am already starting my research paper for another one of my upper divison class on research and methods. Now that the second week of school is over, I will be spending more time at the library than usual. This is all I have for you guys today, and I will update you guys soon!

-Keng Thao

Hello Concord family,

It has been awhile, and I hope everyone is doing well. So far the weather has been in my favor these past few days. I can’t complain when it’s too hot because when I think about it, winter is only a few months away. Likewise, time goes by fast in just a blink of an eye.

In the past two months, I have been taking summer courses. I have just completed one of my requirement course that I dropped last semester. Honestly, I didn’t think I was going to do well and would have to drop it again. I passed with a satisfied score, and can finally move on to take more major cores. I am now onto my second course which has just started in the past few days. I have also registered for fall semester, and ready to finish this summer strong.

Apart from school, I worked two summer camps with high school students. It was a new experience where I led my very own group of high school students for the very first time. The first camp was focused on Asian American Pacific Islander who had the opportunity to go to college and share their experiences. Following the week after the first camp, I led another group of high school students. This camp was mainly about social justice, equality, and rights. We had amazing guest speakers in which high school students get to experience being in a college classroom. We attended many sessions where high school students get to engage and express on how they feel on certain topics regarding social justice. As a person who never got the opportunity to do this in high school, I am glad to be part of this experience. I hope to take part of this camp again next summer and can lead students to succeed!

This is all I have for you guys this month. Take care and enjoy the good weather! Until next time,

Keng Thao

Hello Concord family,

The weather has been getting better, but it also has been very bipolar. Campus has been looking nice, as there are constructions remodeling things. Can you also believe that April is almost over already? It has been a long roller coaster that never seems to end. Spring semester is almost over and there is just a week left before Summer starts. As final weeks are coming up, I am preparing myself to finish strong and looking for classes to register. It was very stressful towards the end of the semester where I had to withdraw two courses. One of the courses that I withdraw from was one of my favorite courses on Psychology. Even though I did not continue on with the course, it was a great experience and I gained a lot of knowledge. Another one of my courses I dropped, I will be taking again in the Summer. Law enforcement, and sexual health education are the two courses that I am still taking. I have finished my final paper for my sexual health education course and got a pretty good score. My last paper was on HIV criminalization. It’s interesting and new to me that I never knew in some states you could go to prison for hiding your HIV status. This course has taught me so much, and made me more open minded. It’s a course that I wish was taught in high school earlier on. My law enforcement course we had just finished the topic of mental illness in peace officers and arrests of people with mental illness. This semester was probably one of the toughest year for me, as I lost a friend and my partner’s grandma.

Aside from school, there are great things that happened this semester. Last week, our student organization event was a success as it was a second chance at prom to those who weren’t able to have theirs during the pandemic. Working at the Women Center on campus has been amazing. I helped out on a march that was led through the Violence awareness response program (VARP) for sexual assault. These event has brought me to fully experience what it’s like to be on campus again and be involve.

This is for this month, and I will update you after final weeks! Take care, and I hope you all are safe and healthy.

-Keng Thao

Hello Concord family,

I hope that everyone has been well and safe. March is coming close to an end already, and I feel like it wasn’t too long ago where it just started! In just two months, I’ll be done with junior year and onto being a senior. There has been a lot going on this month and I would like to share some great things I learned in class.

This week in my Psychology of sexual health course, we talked about places that provides over-the-counter medicine. Meaning that you don’t need a prescription to buy medicine. At first I didn’t know what it meant by over-the counter, but now it makes sense why there are medications out there we can buy without seeking treatment from a health professional. In my abnormal psycholgy course, I did an assignment on gender dysphoria. I never knew what that word meant or to what it was. After reading an article about what it means, it got sparked my interest. I got to learn what kind of treatments or methods are used to help treat people with gender dysphoria, which particularlly occurr in children. Although, there are great things I’m learning in my courses, I am also facing some challenges. In my abnormal psychology course, I struggled to understand the materials on my previous exams. Luckily, I was able to have a classmate who helped me to improve on my exam scores. I didn’t do as well the second time I took, but I gave it my all and awarded myself with a pat on the back. During the day I took my thrid exam, there were some circumstances that led to my poor academic performance. I recently lost a good friend, as well as my partner’s grandma. It was a tough time during that week, but I pushed through. I have an exam 4 that is coming up, as well as another exam for my stastic of pschology course. I hope that I can do better than my previous exams and imrpove my academic performance.

So far, working on campus has been going well. There are many events that are coming up on April. I’ve been running around doing postering, and making sure I get them where they are needed to be. Walking around every where on campus can be tiring, but I make the best out of it. I am excited with new events coming up, and can’t wait to see people participation!

This is all I have for you all, and I will update soon!

-Keng Thao

Hello everyone!

I hope everyone is doing well. I am halfway through the semester and midterms are coming up. I feel like everything is going by fast, and so many things are going on that I can’t seem to take a break. The past of couple of weeks has been rough lately, but I have some great news I would like to share with you all.

Great news is that I got work study! I work at one of the resource center for students, which by the way is an awesome place. Being able to work on campus has been so helpful as it’s flexible with my school schedule. It was a long wait, but at the end it was worth it. I started my first day of work last week, and it went better than I expected. I got a warm welcoming from everyone and the place is just fill with so much positivity. I’m excited and I look forward on working as a student assistant.

This semester I have been struggling to do well in a few of my classes. In my abnormal psychology course I am doing well on quizes and assignments, but not so well on exams. It’s been challenging, as it’s my first upper divison course. I’m glad I reached out to my professor and is taking measures to improve on my academic success. In class we have just finished with the topic of somatic symptom disorders, and moving on towards depression. Although this course has been hard for me, I enjoy what were learning, and found a lot of things quite interesting. Another course I also have a hard time is statistics for psychology. In class, we have recently just finished going over hypothesis testing, standard error, and sampling means. Hypothesis testing is a method in statisitcs where its used to determine a possible conclusion of hypotheses.These hypotheses then would be called the null and alternate hypothese. Since this course involves a bit of math which I’m not so great at makes it harder. There are a lot of fomulas to work with and topics that is just so hard to understand. I have my exam coming up for this course, so I hope to study and do well. So far, one of my favorite course is psychology of sexual health. This course is self pace and online. There’s no exams, but there are quizes, short papers, and mainly discussion posts that is required to do. In those discussion post, its interesting to see other classmates responses and views. For example, a recent discussion topic the professor have us talked about was whether a ethical non monogomy relationship is for them or not. Not a lot of topics we discussed in class are things we would talk about with people, so it’s interesting to learn what others views and opinions are.

Although this semester has been very stressful, I hope to finish mideterm strong and to improve in my classes. That’s all for this month and I will update you all soon. Take care, and stay safe!

-Keng Thao

Hello Concord family,

Happy new year! I hope everyone started the year good so far. The weather has been really bipolar. It’s warm, and then the next day it’s cold or heavy snowfall comes through. Good thing I’m always prepared!

This semester has been to a great start. I registered for a upper division course and it’s quite different from the course I have taken the past years. It is challenging and I find myself struggling. A lot of the materials that is being taught in my upper divison course are reviews from previous classes I’ve taken. I also learned a few new things in this course that got my interest. So far I’ve learned a lot about psychological disorders, projective tests and diagnosis. One of my course that is entirely new to me is Statstics of Psychology. I am not a person who is skillful in math, and this course does just exactly that. It’s fun solving frequency tables, which involves in finding the mean and mode, but it can be really frustrating. One mistake or miscalculations and the data set could go wrong. One course that I’m taking this semester that is not a part of my major is Law enforcement. My sister recommended this course as it relates to psychology and talks about behaviors. I love everything about this course and it is one of my favorite course this year. I’m excited to what knowledge I will obtain at the end of this semester.

With my Minor out of the way, I feel more at ease on being able to finish school. One big major changes I made this year is studying. The past couple of years I struggled on investing time to studying and it really impact how well I did in my classes. This year I see myself spending more time at the library and focusing on what needs to be done first. I think it has been one of the biggest accomplishment for me. One thing that I still struggle with is procastination. I hope this year I can improve on it and be able to not procastinate as much as I used too.

With a new year I hope we all can enjoy it and move on with new memories. That is all from me, and I will update you guys soon. Until next time!

-Keng Thao

Hello Concord family,

I hope you all had a great thanksgiving, and is doing well. My thanksgiving break was great as I just turned 21! I’m getting closer to being an adult as the year goes by. I celebrated my birthday over break, and had a family feast. During break, my partner surprised me with a nintendo switch that I always wanted. My family and I can’t get over mario kart. Such a great family game to play when it comes to gathering. I recived many wishes and unexpected gifts. It was such a great time to get away from school during break, but it went by too fast.

I am already 15 weeks in of school, and only two more weeks left. Final exams are coming up so fast that I feel like theres no time to be prepare. I have spent a lot of time procastinating and stressing which isn’t good. This semester I am assign to do group work in two different courses. It’s funny because both of the course is Anthropology. For the last two years, I’ve never done any group project that lasted through the semester. I thought it’ll be nice to be working in groups this year, but it turned out to be the opposite. It has been very stressful. It’s never fun when only one person is doing all the work and try to put effort. Along with that, I have been doing pretty well in my Math course, except for one of the exam.The past few weeks,we learned about logorithims and its properties. I didn’t feel as confident and struggled understanding the materials. Even though I felt like I did bad on my recent exam, I am doing better than my previous years. I’m glad to see the progress and improvements as I continue to learn.

As final exams are approaching, I hope do well. I am very close to completing my minor, so If I pass this semester I will be done and just have my major left to complete. I plan on to take summer courses when the time comes. I’m excited for next semester, yet still need to look into more classes to take. Lets finish strong and keep on going! Take care, stay warm and stay safe.

Until next time,

-Keng Thao

Hello Concord Family,

I hope everyone has been doing well. This month sure did go by fast! I am already halfway through my Fall semester. So far I’ve been studying for upcoming exams. Lately I’ve also been inolved on campus with doing student activities. I met more new people and got to form a close bond with those who I never thought to become friends with. It really does remind me back when it was covid free when I was still more social.

This past week I took my Math exam. I did so much better than on my first exam with a higher score! I almost broke in tears because in all of my math course I have taken, this was a big accomplishment. I didn’t do as well as I thought I would, but it was a big progress. With that, I am preparing another exam for this upcoming week. I am also preparing for my Anthropology exam. It has been interesting learning about primates and fossils. It involves so much with biology. Human evolution is one of my favorite topic we talked about in lecture. Overall, classes has been going well. I do hope to become a better exam taker.

Apart from school, classes and studying, I have also been involved in a lot of fun things! Every year at my University there would be a event called “Hmong Culture Day”. It’s a day where we celebrate Hmong culture with perfomances, food, fashion show, and guest speakers. This year we were able to make the event happened, although due to covid restrictions we couldn’t serve food. Desptite that, it was still a big success and it went well! I wasn’t able to perform, but I participated in the fashion show. High schoolers from two different school came to watch and were really supportive. The best highlight this semester.

As my exams are coming up, wish me good luck. Hopefully I am able to ace these exams and not be stressed out. I will update you all soon. Have a safe, fun and Happy Hallween! Until next time,

-Keng Thao