In the frenzy and anxiety of starting a new semester, I started to feel stressed out about the stress that I may experience when the workload of the semester picks up again. I know I should have been living in…
How to De-Stress and Self-Motivate
Last week I attend Academic Success’ workshop titled Strategies to Reduce Stress, Increase Motivation, and Achieve Your Goals. The tips and links that were given in the workshop were things such as: First, identify difficulties and sources of stress such…
Surviving Burnout
September has always felt like a great month: after a season of rest, dabbling in hobbies, and hanging out with friends, you come back to school ready to take on the new academic year. You’re ready to be that enthusiastic,…
Take a Break
Sometimes, if I focus on one thing for too long, it feels like my brain might melt and lazily drip out from my ears. It isn’t a nice feeling. Chances are you know what I’m talking about (minus the melting…
Finding a Zen Moment on Campus
U of T has no shortage of picturesque spots around campus that are perfect places for you to take a moment for yourself to do some contemplation or meditation. But as it starts to get colder I realise that most…
Staying on Track with Your Self-Care
I mentioned in an earlier blog that I think maintaining the self-discipline to actually keep yourself well, both mentally and physically, can be hard at times. Knowing about and trying out different self-care strategies is great, but sticking to them can be another thing. As we’re writing all about self-care this week, I started thinking about why some of the self-care activities and strategies I’ve experimented with haven’t stuck while others have…
I love looking through her art journals (click through for an example) when I’m looking for inspirations for my own “art journals” (I use quotations because my attempts are more chicken scrawl than art, to be honest).
How Volunteering Defeated Stress
When I think of October, grainy vignettes of nights spent in Robarts during extended hours begin cycling through my memory. Moving images in sepia of myself weeping as I struggle to finish multiple essays due the next day; or in grayscale, of myself flustered as I burn my tongue on my second pot of coffee in an attempt to stay lucid while I rush to learn neglected chapters because the midterm is in nine hours, are two of the many depressing images that I automatically associate with this spooky month. Sometimes, for tolerability’s sake, I accompany these memories with a cameo of a sad panda playing a tiny violin. Essentially, October has come to represent an exhaustingly, unhealthy concoction of sleepless nights and excessive stress.
Surprisingly, this is where volunteerism has swooped in to save the day.
Warm Tea, Warm Company: Unplugging at Hart House’s Tea Social
Step aside, Ms. Trelawney. Disney is the new fortune teller of the future. Didn’t they create “It’s a Small World,” the infamous ride where dolls sing about how small the world is, years ago? Their prediction came true. Now I can talk to all my friends—from someone living a couple of doors down from me to someone in the Philippines—with the power of one device: my phone. However, with every blessing comes a curse, and I didn’t realize the curse of constantly using social media as a means to talk to people until I decided to try out the #unplugUofT trend—where students try to ‘unplug’ from their devices and social media accounts for a little while—and met up with some friends not through a social media platform, for once.
Where did I go? Well, I’m sure some of you know by now I have an intense obsession with tea. So of course I asked one of my friends to go to the Tea Social with me—a weekly event hosted at Hart House’s Reading Room every Tuesday.
As promised by the title, there was glorious tea. Two big teapots filled with black tea, plus some granola bars set up on a side table.
Practice, or Homework, Makes Perfect
I’ll admit it. Sometimes I can be a keener. This is odd because as a self-proclaimed and-still-struggling-procrastinator-who-has-had-an-unfortunate-history-of-not-being-able-to-keep-up-with-anything-type-of-person (long label, I know), it’s quite contradictory to claim that I’m also the total opposite. But, hear me out. Whenever I sign up…
Our Support Networks
In a time filled with assignments and exams, I can’t help but be thankful for the few moments I can take out of my schedule to meet up with my friends to de-stress. A recent girls’ night out has made…