so we're here at the blue and who are you hi I'm Gabriel Wilde with Blue microphones we're here at 2017 CES show and very excited to show you all the new products we have in the booth today so you have a new microphone right here yes this is called the raspberry is our newest USB microphone and it is great for portable recording so it's plug-and-play with Mac PC iPhone and iPad Android Android would be something that folks could try on their own but it's not something that's officially supported maybe but I think there's a number of folks who have been successful doing that kind of thing and what are those things on the side what does it do yeah so what's great about this microphone is that it has headphone jack so that you can listen to the sound from your computer as you're recording you can change the headphone volume here you can change the microphone gain there or press for mute and that allows you to have zero latency monitoring so you can hear your own voice while you're recording and hear any material that's coming from your computer at the same time so zero latency you can choose if you want to listen from the computer off of the microphone it mixes them together mixes them together yeah so that's the easiest way to record so I heard from somebody on the soundcloud they was working with SoundCloud and he said definitely get this one that's the best microphone yes and why is this supposed to be the best microphone where is your company based we're based in West Lake Village California which is about 30 miles north of Los Angeles and our primary USB products are the Yeti which you see here in the cabinet and also the snowball and these products have become very popular with folks who do podcasting and voiceover work YouTube work or game streaming or music recording why why is it why is special quality yeah special quality we've been making professional studio grade microphones for more than 20 years at the highest studios all around the world and we brought that great studio quality to the USB microphone as well and inside the Yeti microphone there's actually three capsules that work together to provide all the functionality that folks love when they're doing podcasting and so forth so it gets all the basses and the nice voice stuff it gets it nicely recorded that's right sounds like you're in a studio so you basically transform your creative space whether it's your home office or wherever you are into what sounds like a music studio it sounds like NPR that's right does it and what is this for what is the difference between this and the Yeti it's the same quality really except here you can take this with you wherever you're going so it's a smaller of the same quality and with the Yeti there's four patterns for pickup patterns cardioid which is right in front of you bi-directional which is great for interviews stereo which is great for recording bands and omnidirectional which is all around that's the Yeti microphone this microphone is focused on cardioid which is recording directly in front of you so it's grateful podcast great for podcasting great for doing voiceover work in your hotel room when you're out and about or Skype communicating over the internet is great with raspberry or any of our USB so is it gonna be a super successful how successful with this one how many do you sell oh it's it's it's well we sell quite a large number we've been very blessed millions to be very very successful in the market with this with this more who with these microphones they sell in the US or actually everywhere all around the world yeah you could you can get them everywhere and so how much is this one so the raspberry is as $199 US retail and is currently on the market you can buy it from Amazon Best Buy or various retailers around the globe you have different colors for the raspberry it's a single color red that's correct and then but for Yeti we have up to seven colors you have a black one there yeah that one's called blackout Yeti and you can see on the graphic here we have that's cool and we can see how they set it up over there yes over there that's right getting his money and running away stream doesn't like you here we have a for the mic so I can hear you yeah so here we have live game streaming via twitch and our microphones work extremely well in a gaming game streaming format here you have Yeti that's mounted on a boom arm with a shock mount so that the folks that are watching the game stream can hear the gamer and very very good quality and much detail nice you have a new headphones what is that so this is called Sadie and this is a powered headphone so what that means is that when you connect a headphone to a device like an iPad or an iPhone the the audio chip in this device is very small and not really optimized for great audio so what we did was we we created a audio file-grade headphone amplifier and put it in the headphone so now there your device like an iPhone or an iPad can work well within its operating range at a lower volume and then you get all your rich dynamic sound from the headphone amp here it's a nice design what's what's the consideration here how they designed like this so we were inspired by Formula one race cars and how they're able to keep the wheels perfectly parallel in all times and so we realized we could do something similar here and what that does for you the benefit of that is it keeps the ear cups perfectly aligned with your ears at all times and that creates a better fit a better seal and ultimately better sound and how much of those these are 399 US retail all right and they are also available as of this show all right it doesn't noise cancel right but it doesn't cover the ears so that's right so it's not noise canceling but it's noise isolating all right and then over here here we have satellite this is our first wireless noise canceling headphone whoa and once again we have brought our audio file grade amplifier to the headphone to create the rich dynamic sound that you'd get from a wired headphone but now in wireless format and noise canceling yes also has noise canceling but what we've done different here every other noise canceling headphone on the market puts the audio signal and the noise canceling signal through the same speaker and the problem with that is that those frequencies collide and reduce the dynamic range ultimately making a less dynamic listening experience we've done it differently because we created two sets of drivers in each ear cup so the audio has its own dedicated drivers and the noise canceling signal has its own dedicated drivers that way you never compromise the audio you get the rich excellent detailed audio sound and the noise canceling at the same time but they don't collide with each other and so does the microcontrollers in there is an arm cortex and three and four something it's a dynamic drivers for audio and it's very optimized as original electronics here that's yeah just using the same stuff that's correct yeah we we custom-build everything from our drivers to the audio file amp inside to the materials ear cups in the headband everything's custom-made by so is it better than the Bose we all right everybody has choices in the market we hope you'll join we hope you'll choose us and we believe in our sound quality very much you believe that maybe it can compete with a quiet comfort 25 or something we hope 35 this is a wireless one so how much is this one all right this one we're not yet disclosing the price this will be available later this year and is different colors we have white and black this is brownish yeah yeah all right and uh so that's so that's basically recording and playing back that's right that's right that's right yeah we're specialized in microphones and headphones all right


Good evening and welcome to our presentation this evening navigating financial matters. My name is Terry Crowley and I am the Assistant Director in Student Financial Services and we have put together this presentation tonight to help you with some top questions for billing and financial aid. We hope this will be helpful information to you. Our team, we have this evening Jan Hines and Matthew Disorger who will be responding to some questions with me. We will be opening up the question and answer feature towards the end of the presentation. We hope to address as many questions as we can for everyone's benefit but I hope you understand that we cannot answer specific questions about personal circumstances this evening. We have additional information at our web page regarding orientation and some videos. We also have introductory video for students on their checklist through the admissions portal and we are available from 10 to 4.30 every weekday. The first question that we've prepared is where is the bill and when is it due? So fall bills are available online for students and proxy users. The due date is Friday August 19th by 4.30 Eastern Daylight Savings Time. If you're planning ahead the spring bills will be delivered mid December and they'll be due January 11th by 4.30 Eastern Standard Time. How do I avoid a late payment fee and a registration hold? So there's a couple of options make a payment for the balance due by the due date. Online payments are the quickest and immediately post to the account a student and proxy can log in and post a payment and avoid a mail delay. There is an option to enroll in our payment plan that for the balance that would be needed to be completed by August 19th again by the due time. There would be a down payment paid. There's other sources of payment please notify us. You can email us at sfs at uvm.edu with your payment information. Don't assume that we know where the funds are coming from because I'm sure you're using a multiple of sources. Let us know about your plans for payment. As a proxy user, where do I log in to view the bill? There is a proxy login. You can access that through our web page. The students would log in through their student portal, MyUVM. Just a tip if you're sharing a home computer, please clear the browser cache before logging a new login to not compromise any emails or passwords, excuse me. A popular question is what is the comprehensive fee? That is a fee that is charged each semester for two full time students. The fee is $1305 per semester. It's paid by all students to support the services and strength in the university community that supports student success. I'm a proxy, but I didn't get a billing email and can't log in. So this happens. There's a two step for proxy users. So the student will put in your email, but they also need to identify you as a proxy and finish the authorization. I'm showing a page here that is familiar or that you can find on our web page. And that will authorize them. They will authorize you to view your financial aid, billing, and account access. How can I make a payment online? Easily, students and proxies can log in and they will go to View Account and Billing Activity and make payments. If there is a person that is making a guest payment, guest payers can log in with a link, but they will need the student's name and student ID number generally begins with a 9-5. Two types of payment online. An electronic check I recommend that comes from a checking your savings account. There's no additional fee with an electronic check. Please be aware if you pay by a debit or a credit card, there is a 2.85% service charge. So try to avoid any additional charges. Is it too late to start a payment plan for the fall? No. There is still the ability to enroll in a payment plan. We can have one payment plan per student. Either the student or the proxy can log in for that plan. There is a fee of $60, an enrollment fee. There's no interest on the payments if paid by electronic check. There's a fee if you pay by electronic check. To enroll, you would click on the monthly payment plan link. And there is a five-month payment plan that runs from July through November for the fall. After July 21st, though, it would be reduced to a four-month plan. The spring plan is available beginning October 1st, plan ahead. And that would be in December 1 through April 1. Why have we been charged for health insurance? That's a very popular question. There is an annual decision form for a student to either enroll in the health insurance or wave it because they have other coverage. That deadline was July 1st, so if a student did not have the chance to respond to that request, they would have a registration hold and be billed for that first half of the annual premium. But don't worry, a student can still complete the insurance decision and waiver form and have the charge removed with proof of insurance. Please note the final waiver deadline is September 15th, so don't delay and remove that hold and remove that fee from your bill if that's your choice. Why might the balance change from the initial bill? This is a popular question as well. So initially, we will bill for a traditional double room rate for a student, but once their final housing assignment is completed and known, the charges will be adjusted to reflect that actual room they're living in. So that's a change. Also, students register for courses and there might be course fees or lab fees specific to that course. And students add and drop courses, so that could have been picked up since our last billing. Can I get an updated bill to show changes to the account? Not really. We provide online a PDF of the billing statement, but that's at that date in time. It's a static statement and does not update in real time. So we ask that you look at the view the current billing and current account and billing activity. It's a tongue twister to reflect the real time account and see the real charges. Those will be captured on the next billing statement. So if you needed to put those two together, you could print out the two statements for your records. And now I would like to turn it over to my colleague, Jan Henneth. Thank you. Hello everybody and welcome. Thank you again for joining us. My name is Jan. I'm one of the counselors at Student Financial Services and I'll be answering some of our frequently asked questions revolving mainly around scholarships and loans. So here we go. You may have noticed on your statement that some of your aid is listed as pending. We get a lot of questions asking what that means. Most of the pending aid that you will see will be your federal aid. That can be your direct student loans, your parent plus loans. That is because federal money does not pay out until 10 days before classes start. So for the fall, that will pay out on August 19th. Some other things that you might see there if you have set up a payment plan, you may see pending payment plans on that. If you have received an outside scholarship and we know you have the scholarship the monies haven't paid yet, that might be listed there as well. The last thing to keep in mind is you may have some outstanding requirements to satisfy. So please keep checking your email, check your UVM email, and look at your student portal. You can view your requirements right on there. So you want to keep checking that to make sure that you have satisfied everything. Okay, next we are going to touch a little bit on federal work study. Why isn't my federal work study award on my bill? I see it on my award screen, but not on my bill. Federal work study gets paid directly to our student. You're going to obtain a campus job. You will be getting your work study payment in the form of a paycheck that's done through direct deposit. The work study is there to help you with miscellaneous expenses. Students may have some books and things that they want to get, maybe just some personal supplies that they need to have. We cannot guarantee that you will have these funds paid out to you by the time your classes start. So be prepared to get your fall books ahead of time. Maybe this is a good way to save for spring charges for books. All right, now subsidized and unsubsidized direct student loans. These are both loans by the federal government. They are very, very similar. The main difference between these loans is that a subsidized loan is a need-based loan, and there is no interest that accrues until the student goes into their repayment period. An unsubsidized loan, that interest accrues right when the loan disperses. The repayment period starts six months after graduation or when the student drops below half-time or withdraws. And then of course, how do I borrow my federal loans? So what you want to do, and I'm going to stress, this is a student action item. These loans are in the student's name. They are fully responsible. So students, you would go into your portal, accept or decline your student loans. Then you're going to need to do your entrance counseling. This is done right at studentaid.gov, which is where you filled out your FAFSA. This helps you learn your rights and responsibilities as a borrower and teaches you some possibly new loan terminology. You're also going to create your master's promissory note at the same site, studentaid.gov. And this is letting the government know that yes, you understand it's a loan and you'll be responsible for paying that fact. Why is my direct loan on the bill less than my award amount? Now, direct loans, federal loans do have an origination fee.  So a federal direct subsidizer unsubsidized loan has an origination fee of 1.057%. So what does that really mean? If you have a loan, a federal direct loan of $1,000, UVM is going to receive $990 from the federal government.  Their origination fee is 4.228%. Using the same scenario, if you borrow $1,000 on a parent plus loan, UVM will receive $958. So please make sure you're keeping those origination fees in mind. Now, we know a lot of you have just gone through your senior awards night and we want to congratulate you. If you've received any community scholarships, you might be wondering why you don't see them on your bill. We might not know about them. If you haven't told us, we have no way of knowing. So please keep in touch with us. Notify us that you have received an award. Send us an email. If you have an award lender, that would be great. Send that along to us as well, and we can note it into your account. When that scholarship check comes in, most places will send it directly to UVM. The information is right on the screen there. Make sure that they note your name and ID number. If you've been given a check that has been written out to you, you can endorse that, sign it over to UVM, and would be happy to apply that right to your account. Now, some people wonder how you can use your financial aid and loans to pay for books. Refunds are issued when your aid and loan exceed your charges. This can happen if you borrow up to your cost of attendance. That's made up of billable charges plus non-billable charges. The billable charges are the ones that you will see on your bill. Refunds can help offer offset expenses like books and supplies, but they may not be issued before the start of classes. We want to make sure that you set up your direct deposit so if there is any refund due, it'll go directly into your account. Most refunds go directly to the student unless it's a parent plus loan, and I think we'll talk about that in a little while. Okay, now for those parents out there, parent plus loan. This is a loan in your name. You are going to apply directly through studentaid.gov. Again, that's the place that you did the FAFSA, and you can borrow up to the cost of attendance minus the aid that you receive. Keep in mind that about that origination fee to make any adjustments that you might need. Now, when you're on that site, you can ask for the maximum amount, or you can choose a specific amount. For example, if you want to only borrow $5,000, you can certainly do that. If you need any help, sorry, if you need any help determining what you might need to pay on that loan or ask for in that loan, our bill estimator tool on our website at the end has a parent plus loan calculator. The terms of the parent plus loan. The parent plus loan repayment begins while the student is enrolled. You can ask for a deferment on that repayment. Just to go over the rates again, the interest rate for the parent plus loan for the current year is 7.54%, and there is a 4.228 origination fee. Keep in mind that this loan does start accruing interest when it disperses. And here's the part I said we would get to. How can excess plus loans be used to assist my student in buying books or miscellaneous supplies? When you apply for the loan, you want to make sure to check the box to return funds to my student if that is what you would like to happen. Our default is if you borrowed a loan and there's an overage, we're going to give that money back to the borrower, which would be the parent. If you would like that to be different, make sure that you check that box when you are applying for your loan. Now that was a lot about federal loans, but I also want to talk a little bit about private education loans. These are loans that you seek out and apply to through a private lender. They could be banks, credit unions, various lending agencies, and you're going to want to shop around. You're going to want to look for things like your interest payment, origination fees, repayment schedules. Some of these loans will be available for parents to take out. Most of them are in the student's name with a credit worthy co-signer. We do have a list on our website through our loan comparison tool called Elm Select. These are loans that students at UVM have utilized in the past, and it's a great jumping off point to just start to research some loan options. You would then choose one, apply directly through that lender, and that lender would connect to UVM, and that is how we would get your private education loan to pay to your bill. Now some of you have some fabulous 529 saving plans. So the first thing I would like to remind you is just like receiving an outside scholarship, please keep in touch with us. We would love to know if you plan on utilizing those funds, send us an email to the financial institution that will be coming from and the dollar amount. The 529 address is different. Keep in mind it's on our screen here. This goes directly to a PO box. That's our lock box address. Now make sure that the financial institution does include the student's name and ID number so we can get that accurately and quickly to your student's account. One thing I will point out, do not send that overnight. It is a PO and lock box, and it does not take overnight deliveries. Now for students, I have federal work study. How do I get a job? First thing you're going to do, don't forget, if you would like your work study job, accept it on your portal. Second thing is you are going to go to the student employment site on UVM's website. There will be a job board there that will have jobs posted and you are going to do just like any other job. You're going to find a job that you might like.  Now you want to make sure that you get that job on campus. It has to all be completed by October 1st at 4.30. So keep that date in mind. Keep in mind also that that does get paid directly to you on a paycheck. It will not be deducted from your bill. Now for those of you out there who do not have work study, don't you worry, we have other campus jobs available too. You're going to go to the same site and go through the same steps of applying for a job. Now that has wrapped it up for me on loans and scholarships. Thanks again for joining us and I am going to pass it over to my colleague Matt Disorger. Hi everybody. Good evening. Matt Disorger here. Pleased to be with you. The first thing I want to mention before I answer just a few other questions is that we have opened the Q&A in the chat functionality, so do feel free to post questions and we'll begin responding to those shortly. We have kind of a couple other sort of top questions that I'm going to try to address, but feel free to begin putting those questions in that you may have and we'll do our best to answer as many of those as we can once we sort of wrap up with what we had prepared by way of slides this evening. So we did want to speak a little bit to questions that we are getting at this point in time regarding families whose financial circumstances have changed since the FAFSA was filed. So the FAFSA of course is capturing income information from 2020 and we do recognize that many families have had changes in circumstances since that point in time. Not all changes in family finances, not all changes in circumstance will result in a change to a student's financial aid award, but we don't know to explore that with you unless you bring it to our attention. So if you've had a change in family circumstances, the first thing you want to do is draw our attention to that. You can do that by sending an email to our office and just outline what has changed since the FAFSA was filed, be that a change in employment circumstances, a change in income, and it's helpful to give some detail if you have it of a timeline of when did things change, or if you have some information about family income was this in 2020 and here's what it is now. That level of detail will help us determine if this is a circumstance that would warrant a financial aid appeal. So we will review that. We will then engage in communication with you and let you know if we need any additional information or have additional questions. So that's the best way to get that process started. We would ask that in emailing us not to send a bunch of documentation right at the outset, we want to take a look first at what specific questions we might have. So we'll let you know the documentation we might need. And of course, we always, again, don't want folks sending personal identifying information or social security number or tax documents by email. If those are necessary, we'll have you upload those through our secure portal online, which I think is where the next kind of slide and question go to, which is again, if we do need information documentation, tax returns, things of that nature, either in connection with a financial aid appeal or in connection with an application for financial aid, students do have access to our FAFSA verification portal where those items can be securely uploaded, items can be completed online. And again, if you are pursuing a financial aid appeal, we'll be letting you know the specific items we may be looking for there. As we review financial aid appeals, we are in contact with students or if it's a parent that has initiated that, we would be communicating as best we can with that parent as well, advising of the outcome of any appeal. If we have questions, if we need additional information, ultimately, if there is a change to the financial aid award, a student would see that revised financial aid award online, we would communicate out that there had been a change. In some cases, depending on the additional aid that a student was eligible for, that could be in the form of low interest loans or work study that a student might need to accept. If a student through an appeals process is eligible for additional federal or university grant funds, those will be processed and accepted automatically on the student's behalf. A very common question at this time of the year is around the timeline of review of financial aid appeals. When will an appeal be finalized? When will that be reviewed relative to when the bills are due on August 19th? The first thing I'd say at the outset is we are reviewing appeals both quickly, but as you can imagine, we want to ensure that each of these gets our full time and attention and that we do work with families to fully understand the circumstances that they're facing. So we want to work through them as promptly as possible, but I think our primary focus is making sure that each one gets the attention that it deserves. We make every effort to process those with an awareness of the bill due date, but it's not something that we can guarantee. Depending on the nature of an appeal, what information we might need, it is possible that an appeal would be finalized after the bill due date. So our advice is to use the financial aid award that you have at this point in time for your planning purposes and for making a plan to address the bill that's due in August. If an appeal is processed and approved after the bill has come due and after the bill has been paid, we will still process that appeal retroactively and there may be cases where that results in a loan that was borrowed now can be reduced or a payment plan that was set up now can be reduced to reduce those remaining payments. Or if the balance was paid directly using one of the kind of electronic check or 529 payment and then after the fact there's additional financial aid resources, then there would potentially be a refund that would go back out to the student or the payer. So again, as you look out over the next month or so, kind of using the financial aid award that currently exists for that kind of creating that plan and then we'll be continuing to review appeals again as quickly as we are able to. Want to change gears just a little bit and hit on a couple of questions that come up as folks do begin to look forward into the semester and into future years. And of course, not a question that folks want to be thinking about, but one that I think is important to think about and want to speak to is what happens if a student does need to withdraw. And so I would recommend that everyone be familiar with what's posted here, which is the university's tuition refund schedule and that applies for both medical and non-medical withdrawals of any type. And so for the first two weeks of the semester through the 12th of September, a student can withdraw and receive a credit back of 100% of the tuition and fees for those classes. After that, there's a short period of time, basically two weeks where there's a prorated credit amount. There's a week where a student would withdraw and get a 50% credit a week following that where a student would get a 25% credit of tuition and fees. And there are no refunds of tuition and fees after the 26th of September. For students that are living on campus and withdraw from the university, if they withdraw through September 26th, their housing and meal charges are prorated based on the number of days that they were on campus and the usage of their meal plan after September 26th. Again, there would not be a refund that is issued. Financial aid can also be impacted by a withdrawal and the exact impact of that is going to depend on the timing of where we are in the semester, the type of financial aid that a student has. So we always recommend that if students are considering withdrawing that they be in touch with our office so that we can help them understand both the impact of that and also talk about, okay, what does that look like as a student maybe is taking some time off and then looking to return to the university and crafting a plan there. Looking out in terms of renewing financial aid for subsequent years, there are often questions about what the requirements are there. We're often asked whether the FAFSA is required if students are only looking to renew university academic merit scholarships. So UVM merit scholarships do not require the FAFSA. So if that is all that a student has and all that they wish to receive, the FAFSA is not explicitly required. Having said that, I would want everyone to keep in mind that the FAFSA is the gateway not just to need-based grant aid, but it is also the gateway for students who wish to borrow through the federal student loan programs. And it is also required if parents are using that federal direct parent plus loan for their financing. To maintain merit scholarship eligibility, there are really two core requirements. The student needs to remain continuously enrolled as a full-time student and maintain a cumulative GPA of at least 3.0. We evaluate that GPA at the end of every spring semester. So a student who's coming in in the fall will have that GPA at the end of the fall semester. Hopefully it's above the 3.0. If it happens that it's a little under that, they have the spring semester to potentially pull back up to meet that 3.0 requirement. Those GPAs, those merit scholarships are always renewed immediately after the spring semester. Turning to eligibility for need-based and federal financial aid, there is a little bit more involved. So here's where the FAFSA is going to be required. Eligibility for all need-based and federal aid is reevaluated annually. Each year there's a new FAFSA. There's new financial information reported there. So you do want to file the FAFSA every year. You want to be filing in the fall. The FAFSA is available as of October 1st. So in a scant few months here, the FAFSA will be available for the 23-24 academic year. I don't really think the FAFSA is scary. Some people think it is. Maybe you associate it with Halloween and so you want to file the FAFSA before Halloween, file in October. The other piece that is applicable with federal financial aid is that students do need to maintain satisfactory academic progress. There's two main components to that. Students need to successfully earn the credits that they're taking. So students need to successfully complete at least two-thirds, 67% of the credits that they attempt. So that means that they're passing those classes. So withdrawals, incompletes, failing grades, those are things that impact that completion rate piece and could put financial aid in jeopardy. Students do also for federal and need-based aid need to maintain a minimum cumulative GPA. That requirement does vary a little bit across the university for the majority of our colleges and majors. It's a 2.0 requirement for federal and need-based financial aid, but there are some specific programs notably in the College of Nursing and Health Sciences that do have a higher GPA requirement because those programs have higher requirements for the students to remain enrolled. And you can find kind of details on those requirements on our website. I think with that we are through sort of the questions that we had at the outset. And what I'll begin doing now is looking through the questions that folks have posted. You can continue to post those. And we're not going to be responding in writing to each of those, but I'm going to go through and answer as many of those as I can. So feel free to keep posting those in. There are a couple of questions about 529 plans. So I'll endeavor to speak to those. So one was whether a family could pay the bill out of pocket. So maybe pay the bill out of a checking account or something like that and then use a 529 plan to get to sort of reimburse yourself. I think that would be possible, but I want to provide a couple of other thoughts there. So first of all, 529 payments can generally be issued either directly to the university or they can generally also be issued out to the 529 plan holder.  And I think it's split. We see a great many folks that do have those payments sent directly to us so that there isn't a need to to sort of make an upfront payment and then get reimbursement. Other folks like to have the payment sent to them directly and then make payment from there. If you are having the 529 disbursement sent directly to UVM, you may be concerned about how do I know that that payment will reach UVM by the August 19th due date. I think that that is an appropriate concern and question. Many of the 529 plans are behind the scenes actually still cutting and sending a paper check to our office. So you're requesting a 529 payment on August 12th. There's not a guarantee that we will have that money in hand by the 19th. But what I would recommend is when you request your 529 distribution, send our office an email. You can send us a copy of the distribution request or let us know how much you've asked for, the date you asked for that. That's as Terry was talking about earlier. That's that payment information that we would be looking for from you. So we know how you're planning to approach the bill due date. And if we know that you've asked for a 529 distribution for your remaining payment, that may be sufficient to kind of avoid any sort of late, late, late fee if we know that that's we know from you that that's coming. There was another question about whether a 529 plan could be linked to the payment plan or if those should be paid directly. I think it would be challenging to link the 529 plan to that monthly payment plan. It would be much more, much more efficient, much easier to identify the amount of the of the 529 plan that you expect to use this semester and have that sent as one payment to the university. If that is not enough to cover the entire balance, so many families might be taking a portion through a 529 plan and maybe then there's a remaining amount they want to use a payment plan for. So in that scenario, send the 529 payment in its entirety to UVM for the semester and then you can use the payment plan for the remaining amount. But trying to time your 529 distribution requests to monthly payments that are due I think would be a lot of really extra time and energy and difficult to time really perfectly. Let me just see if there were any other 529 questions. It looks like one has an option to electronically send it to UVM or request that the check be mailed. Most of behind the scenes most of the payments are coming into us by check to that PO box. We are not set up to receive those funds wired from the individual companies. So I would elect to go the route of having that sent by check because candidly, I think that's what's going to happen behind the scenes regardless. And again, shoot us an email when you have that request so we know to be on the lookout for that. All right, let's see. Question about a student who's received local scholarship. And in this case and local scholarships are kind of all over the map. Some of them, the scholarship check gets sent right to UVM. It's payable to UVM. In the case of this individual, this was a check that was just made payable directly to the student. The student has been issued that check. They've deposited that and are planning to use that to help with costs this fall. The question is, is there anything else that needs to be done? And the answer is yes. Our office does need to be aware of all scholarship and outside resources that a student is receiving. And that's true whether the payments are coming directly to UVM or if they were paid directly to the student. Eligibility for need-based financial aid and federal aid does require that we be aware of those external scholarship resources. So if you or your student is receiving scholarships, which aren't reflected in the current financial aid award, you should notify our office of those. Again, best way there is going to be by email. You can send us an email that just kind of itemizes what's happening there or if you have copies of the award letters, you can send those along so that we can incorporate those into the financial aid award. That often raises another set of questions of like, well, wait a minute, what does that mean? What's the impact going to be to a student's award? Every student's financial aid award, financial circumstances, the amount of scholarships they're receiving from the local community, those all vary from student to student. So I can't give a universal answer, but what I can say is that in the vast majority of circumstances, these local community-based scholarships that students are receiving, the result is less for the student or family to pay out of pocket or borrow by way of loans or pay through a payment plan. Having said that, there are some cases where because a student is receiving a certain amount of external scholarship resources that their need-based financial aid is going to be adjusted, and certainly if that's the case, we want to be able to communicate that as soon as possible, and as a result would ask that you communicate that to us as soon as you can. Okay, question is from someone who's completed the FAFSA, and there's a requirement for loan counseling, and who should be doing that? So the loan counseling requirements for the federal direct loans, those are student requirements. So these are federal student loans barred in the student's name, so there should be a student login to studentloans.gov, which the student would use to complete those requirements. That should be the same login as was used to complete the FAFSA. The FAFSA is in the student's name, so those FAFSA credentials are the students, and so that same login should be the student for completing those loan counseling and promissory note requirements. Question here about student employment and work-study jobs, and how to search for those and identify which jobs are available. So our student employment website is uvm.edu slash student employment, and students can get access in there to our jobs database. That jobs database will indicate which jobs are open to students who have federal work-study. Some jobs are only open to students who are federal work-study eligible. Other jobs are open to all students, regardless of their work-study eligibility, and you should see indication of that within the jobs database, so you know which jobs to potentially apply for. The other thing I'll just mention while on the topic of student employment and kind of searching for jobs, the jobs database is not static. So if you were to go and look at the jobs that are posted there today, there may be new jobs posted a week or two weeks from now as departments on campus continue to identify the openings that they have for the fall. Question about how you can be sure that you have accepted your financial aid. So any grants and scholarships will be accepted automatically. The loans and federal work-study, if you've accepted those, you'd see that as the status. If you went back into the financial aid award online, you would see that those showed a status of accepted rather than kind of an offered status. Some questions about kind of the billing process. So question from a proxy user who is set up as a proxy but has not received an email that the statement was available. So there's a couple of possibilities there. So we generated the statements for the fall semester on or around July 15th. It was the tail end of last week. So if you were set up as a proxy user after that, then you would not have been set up as a proxy to receive that initial email but should have access to log in at this time to view the account and view the statement. If your student set you up as a proxy before July 14th or so, like more than a week ago, you should have received an email last Thursday or Friday morning with that billing notification. So if you believe that you're set up for proxy access but you didn't get an email from us last week, that could be a sign of one of maybe two things. Maybe our billing email went into a spam folder which does occur or it could be a sign that your student has not fully completed the proxy setup process. There are two steps to that. A student goes in and they say, here's the name of the individual. I'd like to be a proxy user. Here's their email address. That's step one. Students need to take a second step to go in and say, I authorize this individual to view my billing information and my financial aid information or one or the other. So I would say have your student log back in, make sure that that proxy process was fully completed there. Question about when and how will students receive statements on their loan? So I'm thinking this is a question about how will a student know when those loans are actually due for monthly payments? So the federal direct subsidized and unsubsidized loans which are in the student's name, those payments begin six months after either the student graduates or takes time off, falls below half time status. And what will happen is once the loan is fully processed for the year, that loan will be assigned to a servicer by the federal government. That servicer will do the monthly billing. The student will have an online portal where they can view and make payments and you'll get information directly from that federal loan servicer. So that will not be from the university or through the university. That will be with the federal government. They contract with a few different companies to do the process of sending those billing statements and whether that's by mail or online is going to be information that you would get directly from the servicer there. So here's a question about if somebody has overpaid or if there's a credit balance later on in the semester, how is that issued? If you've overpaid or if there's loan resources that overpay the account, we will be looking to issue those out as refunds. Exactly when that happens and where is that going to go does depend on the specific situation. So there are some cases where there's money coming in from a variety of sources. There might be a parent loan as part of the equation. There might be student loans. There maybe is a payment that's come in from another third party. So all of that can impact where are we going to send the refund and exactly when is that going to be issued. But if you do see at any point that you have a credit balance on the account, you can certainly get in touch with us to kind of talk that through. If students have an overpayment from financial aid, we will begin issuing those refunds automatically beginning the week of August 22nd. Okay, question about the payment plan and the question is if we start the payment plan tonight, will the total still be split over five payments? So if you go on enroll in a payment plan this evening, if that's the next item on your agenda, the way that's going to work is you're going to make one payment today when you enroll. That's going to be the first payment, the first of five. The next payment is going to be due right around the corner on August 1st. So you're going to have two payments kind of right back to back. You're going to have one that you pay today. That's the July payment as you enroll. You're going to have a payment that's due August 1st and then you would go from there September, October, November. So that's how that would play out for those that are enrolling at this point in time. Okay, question about we recently got a room assignment but don't know what kind of room it is and whether those adjustments have happened on the bill. So great question. When we do the billing for the fall, it is before all those housing assignments have been finalized. And so all of our incoming students are we bill initially for the traditional double room rate. And as this question implies, residence life is in the process of finalizing and communicating those housing assignments and that may result in some adjustments. So if a student is in a more expensive room, maybe a suite of some sort or a single, then there may be an additional charge. Some students who may be in a triple room may receive a credit. Those have not come through to students' accounts yet. Residence life again is in the process of finalizing and will begin sending those over to students' accounts over the kind of the coming weeks. I don't have an exact date there, but that will be happening in the near future. And again, that's where you may see either a credit or potentially an additional charge posted there. Let's see. Some questions about just the nature of the presentation. Yes, this will be posted and made available online. Probably will be available online and maybe within a week or so it does go through a process to get captions put on there and then will be posted online. Let's see. Question about somebody who signed a promissory note, accepted a loan, indicated they wanted to borrow that loan and now maybe has changed their mind, maybe wants to not borrow the loan and just make a payment instead. Certainly possible to make adjustments to loans that have been accepted. And it goes the other way as well. If you declined a loan and now are rethinking, oh, maybe we want to borrow that, that's possible as well. You won't be able to make those changes directly online. So send our office an email. Again, the email address on the screen there, sfs at uvm.edu and let us know what adjustments you're looking to make and we can work with you on that front. In terms of that process of accepting federal aid, if students haven't accepted loans, if the loans, you're not seeing those on the billing statement at all, you're not seeing them reflected. They probably have not been accepted. Students are going to want to go in online to their MyUVM account, their portal. They're going to go to the Student Financial Services section. They're going to go to view their financial aid award and that's where they would be able to go in and just do a drop down of accept or decline based on the choice that that you'd like to make. Some questions about scholarships and and just sort of being conscious of time here. Take a quick look. So a couple will probably answer a couple more. Some questions about scholarships. One is if a student's GPA falls below the 3.0 requirement for cumulative GPA requirement for merit scholarships after the spring semester, what happens there? So there's not a probationary period beyond that. So we give students that first year. If a student's GPA after the spring semester is below the 3.0 requirement, the scholarship would be withdrawn. But having said that, we do provide a path for students to regain their scholarship eligibility in a subsequent year. So we do the scholarship reviews for all students at the end of every spring. So if a student at the end of their first year is below that 3.0 requirement and the scholarship is then withdrawn, it would be withdrawn for their sophomore year. But at the end of their sophomore year, now the GPA is back at or above a 3.0 cumulative, then that student would have re-earned that scholarship for their junior year. All right, I'm going to take sort of in our last minute or so here to see any other questions we might be able to get in. One is if a student has an overage or an overpayment on their account, can they have it applied to the future semester? Yes, we can hold those credit balances on accounts for future semesters. If that's what you would like, just let us know. Again, send us an email to communicate that. Some questions about the timing and how housing assignments are communicated. That piece is not my area of expertise. I know that residents' life works tirelessly over the summer to finalize those housing assignments. How they kind of get everybody in a spot is amazing on some levels and I can't speak to that in detail. So I don't know the exact details of the timing there of when those are finalized and communicated. I do know that shortly after those are communicated to the student, if there is an adjustment to the student's account that those would be posted to our office and to the student's account accordingly. So I want to be respectful of time. It's just a minute past eight o'clock. I know that there are some questions that we have not answered. I also know that if we stayed all evening, we might not answer all questions. And I know that many of you may not have a question tonight, but you may have one a day or a week or two months from now. And whenever that time may be, I encourage you to be in contact with our office myself. My colleagues, Jan and Terry, who were on the event with us this evening and all of our colleagues who are joining us and do our work each day, happy to assist you in navigating the questions that you may have. We look forward to working with you and seeing your students on campus in the fall. So I thank you very much for your time and wish everyone a pleasant evening. Thank you.


It's been a whole 10 years since Satoshi put Quill to parchment and composed the Bitcoin White Paper. However, founder of Bitcoin Wallet's startup Zappo, Wences Caesaris, thinks Bitcoin is still at the early stages of development. Caesaris earned the nickname Patient Zero because of his role in boosting cryptocurrencies popularity in Silicon Valley. He compares the leading crypto to the internet in 1992 and says it will take several years before we can assess whether it is successful or not. Well, for now, the crypto market is relatively stable, while the stock market is the one that is volatile. However, there are major problems surrounding crypto itself. In the US, a man faces five years imprisonment for trading over the legal amount on local Bitcoins. And Charlie's Shreve, a.k.a. Bitcoin's first felon, is suspected of stealing thousands of Bitcoin from internet entrepreneurs the Winklevoss Twins. Meanwhile, in Russia, the government thinks blockchain sounds too much like a reference to prison. But that probably says more about them than about blockchain. Also this week, a potential exit scam on a Canadian exchange. The e-Krona may hit Sweden, initiative Q, and Coinbase raises the big bucks despite no IPO in sight. Ladies and gentlemen, here's your weekly hot alert digest. Last Sunday, something very strange happened in the land of the moose and the bees. Canadian crypto exchange Maple Change suddenly announced that $6 million worth of Bitcoin had been stolen. Cryptocurrencies would not be refunded, and they were shutting down their social media. Basically, they made like a maple tree and LEAVED. The crypto-mounties, however, were suspicious, for them it had all the classic signs of an exit scam. CEO of Binance CZ among them set up about dissuading crypto holders from trusting exchanges that don't offer cold wallets. Prominent analyst and coin telegraph contributor Joseph Young also said, There is no incentive for using small exchanges. Use established exchanges that are regulated and transparent. Small exchanges also focus on maximizing profitability, not security or investor protection. A few hours later, Maple, like their compatriot Celine Dion, decided both their heart and their Twitter activity would go on, hitting back at the scam allegations. We have not disappeared guys. We simply turned off our accounts temporarily to think this solution through. We cannot refund everyone all their funds, but we will be opening wallets to whatever we have left so people can hopefully withdraw their funds. The fund launched a Discord server for customers to issue refund requests and return some of the stolen crypto assets. However, the company declared that Bitcoin and Litecoin funds, which made up the majority of the stolen amount, cannot be refunded. In the meantime, independent researchers uncovered and published the identities of those behind Maple Change in the attempt to hold them accountable. Joseph Young even got on board, publishing the home addresses of these people, which caused him to be temporarily blocked from Twitter. He has since apologized. Sweden could be the first country to adopt a national centralized digital currency. Riksbank, the Swedish central bank, is planning to launch the E-Krona in 2019 in response to a country where the majority of transactions are conducted via private banks that increasingly refuse to handle cash. So a battle is being waged between the private banks and the central banks. But who will win? Society or corporate interest? 85% of Swedish people from ages 16 to 74 bank online, compared to 51% of their EU counterparts. A recent report by the central bank revealed that only 13% of Swedes paid cash for their most recent purchases, compared to 39% in 2010. The Stockholm-based SEB bank has 118 branches, only 7 of which actually handle cash. Most private banks actually refuse to handle any cash at all. The E-Krona is touted as the answer to concerns that private banks don't offer secure payment systems. The centralized currency can be held on a card, or even on a mobile app. Following concerns that Sweden was moving too fast, Riksbank actually conducted a consultation about a cashless society, with their conclusion as the following. It is our opinion that all banks and other credit institutions that offer payment accounts shall be obliged to handle cash. Sweden might be the first, but it certainly won't be the last to adopt a centralized digital currency. And before these changes become permanent, serious questions need to be addressed. For example, all transactions will be traceable. That means the government can keep a close eye on everything you do, and could potentially block payments and freeze accounts of anyone they choose. This means that ordinary citizens have to rely on the good nature of those in power, not to take the draconian measures against them. If that sounds unrealistically dystopian, take a look at China's proposed social credit system, whose punitive actions include flight bans and throttled internet speeds. Of course, Sweden is both literally and figuratively miles away from China, but the threat to personal freedoms is still there. As we move towards a cashless society, we have to ask ourselves if this is what we want, or if big banks and government are simply using a technique behavioral economists call nudging, where they make the alternative, cash for example, so difficult to be used that it becomes obsolete. It might be the case that Bitcoin and other cryptos are not entirely private, nor entirely decentralized, but they are a hell of a lot more so than the E-Krona, or any other government and central big batch digital currency that we will see in the future. We spoke about this to Yvonne on Tech, developer and popular blockchain educator on YouTube. We have a few private banks controlling the entire economy. You cannot even buy food nowadays without having a credit card, so you need to be a bank customer. So the central bank doesn't want that, they want to have digital cash so that you don't have to be a bank customer in order to do digital transactions. And so I do understand the development, I do understand why they're doing that but at the same time you realize that if the state controls digital cash and they can exclude you from digital cash whenever they want, what if you go to the wrong protest, what if you go to the wrong political party, who knows what government we will have in the future. So in my view, it might put too much power in the hands of the government. Because if you're not able to use the financial system because the government doesn't like you, you cannot buy food, you cannot buy gas, you cannot do any transactions at all, we might be in a dystopian place. People still have a very high trust in the government and in the financial system. That's why I think many Swedes do not ask the critical questions. They do not ask, you know what, maybe the government has too much power now. And so this is something that the Swedish society is vulnerable against, a very powerful government because we're not critical enough. You go to the US, many people are very critical of central government. The Swedish society is very digital, we like high technology, we like new technology, a lot of tech companies are from Sweden so people are very positive towards new developments and they adopt new technology quickly. And so in that regard, I understand the argument that it might be the fact that the government is pushing and you know, for them, it is, of course, very if everyone uses digital cash as well because you can track everything, there is easier control, you control the entire system. But at the same time, I wouldn't say that the market is completely out of the picture. The market is a very, very strong force and people do not like physical cash. Sounds like a cult. Could be a pyramid scheme. One thing is for sure, initiative Q is definitely not a crypto. But that hasn't stopped people from calling it the new Bitcoin. It was founded by entrepreneur Sare Wilf, whose payment security company was acquired by PayPal in 2008 and economist Lawrence White. The proposed payment network will use the currency Q, currently worthless, but early adopters are being offered free hues in exchange for their email. The website currently boasts over 2 million signups or suckers who knows really Q is a private currency that uses a centralized database rather than blockchain to operate. However, Wilf promises should the project fail, no data will be sold, but instead destroyed, he promises honestly. Currently, the only way to acquire cues is via an invite email. Each person signed up can sign up five more people, which has led to accusations of a pyramid scheme. It might technically, or more importantly, legally not be a pyramid scheme, but it does certainly smell like one. For example, in the invitation email, it initially said early adopters could eventually stand to make 130K. The reward figure eventually dropped to 85K. The economist behind it, Lawrence White, is legit and a pretty serious guy who wants to see free banking and do away with the Federal Reserve. So perhaps it's not a get rich quick or a pyramid scheme but it certainly seems a bit crazy. The main thing that is confusing here is that when people see something that looks like offer of free money, then that is like the biggest red flag you can have. Unfortunately, there is no other way for us to explain this. We want to change the payment system and the monetary system that requires, that's what I currently believe the only way to do this is by issuing a new kind of money and the only way to get the world to adopt it is by distributing it freely to anyone who helps adoption of this system. So that's the only way this can work. It does, I know it sounds to people like very suspicious free money but there's just no other way this can work. A new study published in the journal Nature Climate Change predicts that Bitcoin usage will raise global temperatures above two degrees Celsius by 2033. It must be noted that in fact the transport and agriculture industry are the leaders when it comes to the production of harmful emissions like CO2 and the report has been met with some criticism. For example, that the Bitcoin energy crisis has been hyperinflated as it is based on the assumption that carbon emission derives from mining activity and will remain the same for the next 100 years. In the IT world, things can change overnight. So that's why I'm very wary of these extrapolations beyond a year or two. And at any time people who try to extrapolate even 10 years with IT I think are almost always going to be wrong. It's irresponsible and reckless. Everyone agrees we should track new end uses and we should try to understand their emissions intensity but let's get the numbers right. Let's not overestimate. Various trends in the market haven't scared away investors of late. In fact, quite the opposite. Dapper Labs, the company behind CryptoKitties, raised $15 million in a new funding round this week. Elsewhere, Coinbase announced a $300 million funding round on Tuesday. The company, which is valued at $1.6 billion in the summer of 2017, is now worth about $8 billion. Coinbase will use the additional funds to accelerate the adoption of crypto currencies and digital assets. Commenting on Coinbase's expansion, A$APHIRG stated, we see Coinbase's growth as validation that the ecosystem will only continue to grow in size, influence and impact, ultimately ushering in a more open financial system for the world. Coinbase plans to build infrastructure between fiat and crypto in regulated markets around the world as well as to offer more crypto currencies on its platform. The company also said it wanted to bring more institutional funds into the market. Despite rumors Coinbase was going public, here each said an IPO won't happen anytime soon. The expansion of Coinbase seems to reflect a broader phenomenon affecting the whole crypto exchange sector. On October 29th, Bitstamp was acquired by NXMH, a Belgium-based investment company and majority stakeholder of South Korean crypto exchange Corbit. Earlier in October, South Korea's largest crypto exchange, BitHub, became a part of BK Global, a Singaporean consortium. Many see Coinbase's expansion as a sign that the crypto market is finally stabilizing. Speculative trading is declining and there is a growing interest in crypto from traditional finance. For many, Coinbase is becoming the main point of entry for the traditional finance into the crypto market. We asked Lauren Cohen, professor of business administration at Harvard Business School, to evaluate this new trend. What you'll see is that this is the traditional finance companies in large storage, even in the U.S. are starting to get into this. In the U.S., it's a little trickier given regulatory uncertainty, but you have big players such as Fidelity that are making fairly large moves into the space. I do think it's only a matter of time until nearly every financial institution has some foot in this race. Now, what foot they're going to take is unclear, whether they're going to do through partnerships, whether they're going to try to develop their own systems, or whether they're going to acquire existing firms. I think there's still volatility left. To tell you that it's going to be straight-line upward, I would be a four. I certainly don't think that's what's going to happen, but I think the trend is going to be upward. The trend is going to be upward in terms of adoption, and the trend is going to be upward in terms of solutions that are developed to enhance widespread adoption. That's both widespread adoption at the institutional and retail level. This week saw dedications and celebrations of the anniversary of the Bitcoin White Paper. It described a protocol that symbolized a disruptive technology that would change the world. Here are some highlights. Of course, not everyone was so complimentary.  Post your White Paper dedication in the comments below. And as always, like, subscribe, and hodl. Cointelegraph. Like, subscribe, and hodl.


Alright guys, what is going on? Welcome to another video, welcome to my brand new office, but it's not really brand new, I've just changed around the furniture a little bit. So basically I've been going back and forth, back and forth in my head as to where I want to take my body going forward as far as my body composition.  So basically my head's been going back and forth, I've been deciding one morning I'll be like nah, I'm cutting today, one morning I will say no I'm bulking today and you know I'm back, I'm back to that, I'm back in this conundrum guys, I'm back in this issue and I've recently decided to go one way or the other so what's happened is recently at the CrossFit gym that I'm at they've decided to do a 28 day challenge and it's a 28 day fat loss challenge and there's a shitload of people doing it, I am doing it too so with that said from yesterday which was Saturday, today is Sunday, today is Sunday the 4th of June and as of, right I'll say this right now, as of tomorrow we're talking Monday the 5th of June I will be starting a 4-6 week mini cup, this is going to be similar to the one I did before I went to Thailand except I'm not going to Thailand so the results will stay and I won't fuck myself up through alcohol and basically guys my vision right now is to make it to day 365 of making gains in the best shape possible. Okay we're not just talking about making gains physically anymore guys, we're talking about making gains emotionally, mentally, physically and spiritually all coming into one so that on that final day I am in the best shape possible to move forward to whatever goals I've got going on so when I say mentally and emotionally recently you know I've gone through a little bit of heartbreak and it's never easy and you know I've gained support from a few people close to me and I want to thank you guys for sort of getting me out of that funk that I was in, yeah it's extremely easy to sort of get you know tunnel vision on one particular person and you know I've done that for a fair few years to be honest and in doing so I've cut myself off from other opportunities with relationships and with different girls that you know may have blossomed into something good but I always had this sort of thought in my head about this other person so I would never let myself get too close to someone else because basically I'd always have this hope of ending up with this this one person that I'd sort of been keen on for a long time and it takes it takes its time I mean time heals all that's that's all I can say it takes time you need people in your corner you know you need to value yourself one thing I wasn't doing guys was valuing myself you've got to have self-worth and you've got to realize what you're worth and I've done that recently and so I can happily say that mentally and emotionally I'm feeling really positive and I wasn't for probably last three weeks so alright so that's enough of that when I start when I start these making gains videos guys I basically just rattle off a day and hope that it's that but today we're actually gonna look at the calendar and work out exactly what day of making gains this is so we're at the 4th of June and believe it or not guys we started this series on August the 13th which was a Saturday so let's see 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 9 10 so that's 40 weeks 41 42 weeks so it was 42 weeks yesterday so 42 7s is 294 so right day 295 today guys boom so at day 295 currently let me take a drink of this first going forward where I want to be end of fucking 52 weeks this series I want to be physically in the best shape possible so we've started CrossFit I'm smashing that three four times a week I'm still going to the gym if I feel like I haven't worked any particular muscle group good enough in the CrossFit classes or the open gym sessions I will go to a commercial gym which I am still at the moment and and train with weights I'm probably doing that two to three times a week so I'm still going to the gym most days and obviously we're starting this mini cup as of tomorrow so I honestly think that'll probably continue all the way up until days 365 so I'm basically I'm gonna cut from here guys I'm cutting from today I'm cutting for the next eight weeks at the end of this series I want to be in the best physical shape possible I honestly think I'm gonna be in the best shape in my life because I won't I probably won't be quite as lean as what I have been in the past but as far as my muscle mass and my shape it's gonna be so much better and I can't wait for that as far as emotionally guys obviously I just told you what I've been going through emotionally I see myself at day 365 being you know focused on where I want to go won't have all these I won't have any regret in my head which I have been dealing with you know such a hard thing to deal with guys is regret when you can't change things I mean there's no they say there's no point crying over spilt milk but geez those tears do come I'll tell you that and anyways so that's mentally physically mentally emotionally let's talk about emotionally now the only thing that's going to help me emotionally become more stable become more of more of a man and move on is to quit weed it really is it's to quit smoking marijuana so emotionally this has been what has been holding me back it's you know I did I did make a video recently on the benefits of marijuana in bodybuilding and I stand by everything I said it does have benefits I do enjoy it but there also comes a time and a place where you know it's not suitable anymore use turns into abuse use turns into abuse and marijuana may be a herb and it may be natural and you know maybe medicinal but it's still a drug and it's still you know affecting your brain function it's it's continually heightening your dopamine levels and you know marijuana may not raise your dopamine levels as much as heroin or fucking crack or meth but it still raises it and what that means is that when you come off or you know on your come down as the feeling starts to wear off what goes up must come down guys yeah your dopamine levels may have only gone up by a certain amount but you know when you take that substance out of the system it's gonna not only come down to zero but it's gonna go below okay that causes a huge amount of mood instability and that is something I struggle with when I talk to the camera I'm in a good mood when I'm not talking to the camera who knows what mood I'm in guys honestly I'm just being real with you right now physically we're gonna be in good shape mentally I can tell I'm in fucking good shape right now emotionally that's the only thing I struggle with and it's all because I smoke too much weed so going forward guys that is gonna be another challenge of mine I hope that by the end of this series I can I can say that it doesn't sort of rule my life anymore because I can't have that happening and I can say that I don't think about this girl anymore because I can't have that happening and I can say that I'm not a fat cunt because I can't have that happening so three things moving forward can't wait we're at day 295 I'm gonna drink my coffee and actually head down to CrossFit believe it or not because it's been awesome really has I've been loving it and that's it so once again guys all I did this morning was know that I need to talk to the camera and I sat down and I put the camera in front of me and anyone that wants to make a YouTube channel a few people have talked to me recently about making YouTube channels and what to you know what to focus on how to improve you know any tips one tip guys one tip be yourself be yourself how can anyone hate on you for being yourself they don't like you they can fuck off if they like you they'll start giving you support and it's an amazing feeling when you can get support from an online community like this and it's a community that I've built over the last few years and it's just it's fucking cool man really is the power of social media and and not only that guys I feel like I've got a huge amount of my chest right now I really do and you know before I felt like I had a huge amount on my chest and now I've got it off and I feel really good actually talked my way through my problems to you guys I now know what I need to do what I'm looking forward to and that's it so until next time have a great day won't you I'll try and have a great day I hope you like my top I thought I'd put something on that's a little bit fresh and bright this is actually a golden aesthetics top so I'm I've never worn it I've had it for about six months but I thought it's way too much to even wear anywhere and actually I was a bit it's I must have lost a little bit of weight because it was fucking tight before and insane I probably have I'm probably I'm probably sitting at about 102 kgs so let's see where we go from here so basically the way I see it as of tomorrow it's gonna be Monday I'm gonna start tracking my macros on my fitness power 2,500 calories once again and we're just gonna see what happens I think I'm gonna shape up pretty well I think my metabolism is running pretty good at the moment so that's it that's the plan I can't wait you guys will see the results as per usual tomorrow is the first day I might vlog it who knows if not I'll see you guys in the next one peace