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San Fran Strategies: An Adventure

This past week I was given the opportunity to attend the National Association of Student Personnel Administrators (NASPA) strategies conference in San Francisco, California with two other Peer Wellness Coaches on campus. Since our work largely deals with peer education and student health and wellness, the conference was the perfect opportunity for us to network with other students and professionals in the field, learn more about current research developments surrounding student substance use and mental health and wellbeing, and to brainstorm with other peer educators about programming and program development. Of course, all that aside, anyone would be crazy to pass up an opportunity to visit California when back here on the hill it’s below freezing and snowing!

doing some networking with other student educators!

Not only did we learn a lot from all of the presentations and speakers that were present, but we also got to do a little sightseeing!

exploring the golden gate bridge!
we arrived right at dusk and got to see the bridge with beautiful clear skies!

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

My favorite presentations of the conference were “Can’t We Like… Talk: Women’s Peer Support of Mental Health” and “Associations between Substance Use and mental Health: Prevention Opportunities and the Power of Peers.” The former of these presentations was the conclusion of a study examining how women negotiate mental health and boundaries with their peers from a feminist poststructural perspective, and the latter centered around recent studies about substance use on college campus, the legalization of marijuana and its effects on the student population, and ways to combat drinking cultures on campuses.

Heading back into the semester now with a jam-packed schedule of 5 classes, work, and my co-curricular involvements, it’s time to implement everything I learned into my own life (especially regarding stress relief, self-care, and wellbeing practices)! Of course, my fellow travelers and I will also have the opportunity to discuss and present what we learned to the various peer education groups on campus (including SWEET, COPE, RPEs, and SHAPE) and get to work creating positive change on campus!

I thoroughly enjoyed the conference and the food!
a little pre-conference selfie 🙂
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A Letter to Holy Cross

Dear Holy Cross,

The simplest way to say this is that I am not the person that I was a year ago, because of you. When I packed a van (very) full of stuff and pulled out of my little Dearborn driveway, I thought I knew what it was going to be like here. I had everything planned; I thought I knew exactly what I was going to do, who I was going to be. Really, I had no idea.

Nothing could have prepared me for the joy, love and care from the students, the professors, and the faculty that would envelop me. My joyful and fantastical daydreams of college friends and parties pale in comparison to the genuine community that found me, loved me, and accepted me here. I am leaving this year a far better person than when I came, and I can only credit that to the people around me this past semester – the people who welcomed me to the hill, accepted me without question, and showed me what it looks like when you love and serve unconditionally.

My first post on this blog was a reflection on how I ended up here – specifically, that, without the hand of Christ, which coincidentally stands tall on the steps of Dinand every day to remind me of that reality – I would have never even known about this college, let alone chose to come here. I think it’s fitting then, to tell how that same hand has shaped my year here, in ways I could never have imagined.

I met the person that would introduce me to my closest friends on an afternoon Kimball shift – a shift that, had my computer not crashed while I was signing up for shifts, I never would have chosen. Over a break on our first shift of the semester, he invited me to a Students for Life meeting. I brushed off the invitation, not planning to go, but the night of the meeting, he saw me in Kimball, eating dinner with my friends, and invited me again. Still not planning on going, I once again brushed him off. Walking up the hill, though, I passed him again, this time right outside the meeting place. Without an escape, I conceded and went to the meeting with him. The people in that room would, within weeks, become my best friends.

One meeting turned into two, then three, and meetings turned into dinners, then study sessions, evening rosaries, daily masses, Thursday night adoration and Saturday evening movie nights. My professors introduced me to ideas that I am sure will form the basis of my vocation in the future, and my friends taught me to grow and evolve, somewhere along the way becoming a better version of myself than I ever thought would exist.

To sum it all up, a year ago, I had no idea what to expect coming here, and would sit daydreaming of what life might be like in the future. Now, I have an answer: life is good.

The next time I write will most likely be from Warsaw, Poland, where I’ll be studying on a Maymester. See you there 😊.
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An a-MAY-zing Spring

The last few weeks have ushed in a flurry of activities and events on campus as we all hunker down for the last weeks of studying. For me, the last few weeks have been filled with concerts, late-night studying, and a visit from my parents! In such a flurry of activity, it has been quite easy to ‘go’ without stopping, and without acknowledging that I’m just a week and a half away from having finished a full year here on the hill. In light of that, I wanted to dedicate this post to highlighting all the things I’ve done in the past weeks that I never would’ve imagined myself doing a year ago:

  1. I went to Clark University last weekend to perform in their arts showcase! It was so fun to pull out some old rep and just have fun performing solo for an audience, and to do a little improv with the dancers beforehand!
  2. I officially finished a YEAR of music theory courses (a major that, a year and a half ago, I had no intention of pursuing).
  3. I worked my first shift as a Kimball captain… (with only a few little messes)
  4. I went to a mini prom (Peter and Prom, a knockoff event of our usual Peter and Paul meetings).
  5. I somehow survived a year of college physics (an impressive feat, trust me).
  6. I said goodbye to my home for the year, Brooks — on to bigger (actually, smaller, but that doesn’t fit the saying) and better dorms!
    peter & prom 🙂
    last kimball shifts!
    the girls of peter & prom 🙂

     

    pre-physics final!
performing at Clark!
saying a final goodbye to brooks!
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Riding the Cyclone

The end of March has meant a multitude of exams, assignments, performances, and the long-awaited arrival of weather, but for me, and a small group of students here, it also meant the opening of the spring Alternate College Theatre (ACT) production: Ride the Cyclone (RTC). Certainly, tech week rehearsals and the final push before spring break could be described as a cyclone of events and responsibilities — one that we all had to ride, like it or not.

the opening of the show!

Although hectic, and some might say crazy (free time became more of a theory than a real thing), RTC  brought me back to the happy days of nutcracker pit orchestra rehearsals back home. I remember, as we all struggled to learn the 70+ pages of Tchaikovsky, let alone play it well, that our conductor said, “It’ll sound like we won’t pull it together right until the last rehearsal. You’ll be convinced we’re not ready, that it won’t work, right until the last rehearsal. But by that first performance, we’ll be ready.”

Of course, we were ready for our first performance, and it went well. But getting there? It certainly felt like we wouldn’t be. A similar experience happened with RTC — we only started rehearsing with the cast three days before opening night, and yet somehow, everything fell into place.

I think that such an experience as that applies to much more than music. As an easily-stressed perfectionist with a tendency to procrastinate, I’m frequently convinced that things won’t work out, that I won’t be prepared, or that full-on disaster is going to strike. Perhaps, I ought to just take a lesson from the show I’ve watched so many times now: “it’s just a ride.”

our lovely little band!