Art appreciation and writing about the experience stimulates students’ cognition, allowing them to recall memories or experiences and get in touch with both their current way of thinking and unconscious emotions. Art appreciation also helps students explore their inner mindset and stimulate setting up of future goals. This study examines how art appreciation approaches can be utilized to promote cognition in first-year college students in online classes. First-year college students were asked to pick three art images, each representing their past, present, and future. Students would stop, think, recall, and imagine, then write how each image projected their past, present, and future. By choosing, seeing, reading, and writing about art, first-year students have the opportunity for self-cognition. In addition, the results provide ways in which art appreciation can be used in first-year seminar courses as well as meaningful insight into students’ emotions and thoughts during their first semester of college.