A few moments before her workshop on emotional wellness was scheduled to begin, Gabrielle Price, an ATLAS mentor, stood in front of an empty conference room. By the time the workshop started at 4 p.m., a single student sat at her side.
“Not a lot of students are interested in emotional wellness,” Price, a public health junior, said.
The one student who did seem interested, architecture freshman Ramon Lopez, said he attended the workshop to fulfill an out-of-class assignment. He could have attended any number of events on campus, but this event seemed the most appealing, he said.
“I want to see the level of stress I’m at right now because it will help improve my stability,” Lopez said.
A few minutes later, Lisa Marie, a general studies senior with an emphasis in social behavior and human understanding, arrived. Marie would be the last student to walk through the door.
The ATLAS program hosted the emotional wellness workshop in the Student Union Memorial Center on Monday. ATLAS, which stands for Applied Tailored Leadership Adventure for Success, is a campus leadership program that certifies students in various areas, including wellness, leadership and event planning. The program also provides mentors, like Price, who work one-on-one with students looking to improve their leadership skills. This workshop was part of a series of wellness workshops that addresses physical, spiritual and occupational health, among other categories.
Price started the workshop by having the students fill out a form titled “Burnout Self-Test,” which is designed to assess a person’s stress level, she said.
For Marie, the self-evaluation confirmed her feelings of distress.
“Now I’ve got the piece of paper that says I’m burned out, so at least I’ve got proof,” she said.
Next, Price conducted a Jeopardy-style game. In the game, the attendees attempted to answer questions taken from various stress-related categories. The first question, worth 300 points, was “What activity can be used to relieve stress?” The answer: journaling.
Another question, for 500 points, was “what is an endocrinologist?”— a scientist who studies the system that produces hormones.
When the Jeopardy-style game was over, Price handed out a worksheet that listed various ways to ease stress, including drinking green tea, listening to classical music and eating “happy meals” that contain HDL cholesterol. It also listed seven ways to feel happy. Connecting with friends and “enjoying the great outdoors” were two of them.
“I just don’t think people really know what levels of stress they’re dealing with,” Price said at the end of the workshop. “They just think that once school’s over it all goes away, but that isn’t always the case.”
