This assignment, albeit interesting and intellectually challenging, has increasingly become an overwhelming mental burden on students in the ENGG1810 unit. 

We think it's important to note that the majority of us are beginner coders who have had little to no experience in coding prior to this unit. We naturally need support to understand the nuanced and dynamic content we've only had 12-weeks of exposure to, and we need time to process the new knowledge we've been continuously intaking. This unit has been paced extremely fast and it's been difficult for us to digest the content we learn, especially when each week has been more or less building on the previous week. None of the above is to say that the lectures, tutorials, challenges, and Friday Seminars have not been precious resources that we are all immensely grateful for. However, given the extremely low skill level most of us began this unit with and the way this unit has been structured, this assignment is a little out of the scope of our abilities. After all, working through targeted problem questions is vastly different to having to apply a wide range of newly-learned skills to a practical simulation.

Tutors have been instructed to give us only curt advice and we have been provided with limited guidance beyond the assignment task sheet itself which, although comprehensive, is extremely daunting and confusing to approach. Most of the responses we've received to the question "how should we start?" have been along the lines of "please refer to the assignment sheet", which has made starting and persisting with the assignment a very discouraging process. Independent work becomes even more unmanageable at the point at which we are so confused that we don't know how to formulate a meaningful question or how to conduct research of our own using online resources. Even many tutors, including Victor, have expressed that this is a surprisingly difficult and "rough" assignment. 

Furthermore, this experience has been especially tough on off-shore students who have not had the benefit of face-to-face interactions with tutors or easily accessible peers with whom they can discuss the assignment. 

Thus, per the recommendation of Dennis, we are requesting a three-day extension on this assignment, until the 31st of May 11:59 PM AEST. The extra time would be invaluable to us and would greatly diminish our current level of stress.