Shé:kon, boozhoo, greetings and hello! My name is Andrea and I am a second-year student majoring in Book and Media Studies, with minors in Indigenous Studies and Creative Expression and Society. I will be the First Nations House blogger…
Arthur Read on Roller Blades (alt: My Struggles with Mental Health)
One thing that few people know about me is that there was a point in time when I didn’t believe that I could make it through university. I didn’t believe that I was supposed to be at U of T.…
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…
Openness at TEDxUofT 2017
To me openness is the ability to embrace that which you don't know. "OPEN" happened to be the theme of this year's TEDxUofT. Throughout the day, speakers from the U of T community shared with the few hundred of us…
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…
Space to Write
When I tell people that I'm a writer, a surprising reaction that I often get is "I used to write too, but I never have the time anymore," or "I write too, but I'm too scared to show anyone my work."…
Flying out of my comfort zone
I never imagined myself living a whole ocean away from Toronto; away from U of T, my parents and my comfort zone. In my final summer at U of T, I took a leap of faith and applied for the summer abroad program. This just happened to be the first year that they offered a psychology course and it was a topic that I was extremely interested in. Not to mention, they were offering 1.0 credit in just a month, which also made it easier for me to convince my parents to let me go to England by myself!
Feature: Cardio kickbox at Goldring
I’ve never really participated in a group fitness class that wasn’t a quiet, restorative yoga session. As such, I had no idea what to expect from the “Cardio Kickbox” drop-in fitness class offered at the Goldring Centre. I came into the class without expectations, exhausted after a long day on campus, and somehow I walked out energized and uplifted.
9-5 Wars: My Journey from full-time student to full-time employee
I lived near campus when I was a full-time student and I still had to rush to just barely make my 10 am classes but lately, I’ve been out of bed by 6:00 am and out the door by 7:00 am. I recently started working full-time while being in school part-time two days a week. I didn't quite feel done with my undergraduate experience when I first got the notification of having completed my credits so I decided to step into the workplace and get the experience but still stay in touch with academia. Before this new position, I had never worked 9-5 every day; I have had summer jobs but all with odd shift hours or 4-6 hours per shift which made sense for me at the time. Now that I have joined the workforce, I am in complete shock of how much more my body is capable of in a full day.