Congratulations on finishing exams and another year of university! The end of school definitely calls for a reward, but while junk food and 24 hours of Netflix are certainly tempting options, I don’t usually feel great after a full day of…
Health and Wellness (page 3)
I Wrote a Novel (Literally)
On Monday, I finished my first novel draft. It was 192 pages in total and just over 58000 words long. It’d taken me seven months to complete, and I wrote it for a fourth year seminar course (VIC479Y1) called The…
Social Media and Mental Health
I once read online that my generation spends an average of seven hours on social media per day. This at first sounded ridiculous to me. Most students don’t even sleep for that long. However, the stat — regardless of whether…
My Mindfulness Journey
Three years ago, I was going through a rough semester and my boyfriend’s mother gave me a book called Wherever You Go There You Are by Jon Kabat-Zinn, a stress reduction and mindfulness expert. Prior to this point, I’d thought of…
On Missing Class
One of the things I love most about university is the independence. Unlike in high school, you don’t need to ask anyone’s permission when you want to go to the washroom or get a drink. You also typically don’t get…
To Tea Or Not To Tea? That’s Never A Question.
A couple years ago, I was at Delirium, the famous bar in Brussels known for having literally thousands of beers. I was never a fan of beer, but the guy there said to me, “people who say they don’t like beer…
Musing About Reading Week
Reading Week has come and gone, and now we’re back to classes. Sigh. Every year, I look forward to the much deserved break and yet again, I fail to realize how quickly a week can go by. I always start…
Learning Through Mentorship
Working with children and with younger students has been a constant passion for me since I started babysitting in grade eight. Whenever I’ve had a stressful day, hanging out with kids always takes me out of my head, makes me…
What do I do with my life?
The closer I’ve gotten to graduation, the less certain I’ve been of what I wanted to do with my life. However, I’ve also begun to make peace with that uncertainty. On January 1 this year, I decided to no longer apply…
Asking for help
When I attended don training a couple years back, we were told a fact that I could not forget: the reason most students wait so long to seek mental health support is because they don’t believe they’re stressed enough to…