To find the general term of a sequence, we need to identify the pattern or rule that governs the sequence. In this case, we can observe that each term in the sequence is decreasing by 5.
Starting with the first term, 7, and subtracting 5 repeatedly, we can generate the following terms:
7, 7 - 5 = 2, 2 - 5 = -3, -3 - 5 = -8, and so on.
The pattern is that each term is obtained by subtracting 5 from the previous term.
Therefore, we can express the general term of the sequence as:
a_n = 7 - 5n,
where n represents the position of the term in the sequence, starting from n = 1 for the first term.