Friday, January 22, 2016

My Motivation

Like I mentioned in my previous post, I initially began to think about researching stress relief techniques for my own well-being as well as to help other students who may be feeling the same way.  This year has been a whirlwind of school work on top of balancing a part-time job, a long commute and I have pretty much completely abandoned my social life as a result. It was making me feel frustrated, unhappy, unmotivated... and I know I am not experiencing these feelings alone.

When I began to look into the mental health of university students I found a shocking but informative article by Maclean's magazine called The Mental Health Crisis on Campus, though written in 2012, I still think it is very relevant today as mental health problems only continue to rise. It made me even more passionate about finding some outlets to reduce stress and help students feel more happy and balanced in the face of never-ending to-do lists. I am passionate about helping others; the feelings I have described are not only felt by myself, but many of my colleagues - I am motivated to find strategies to help us cope. Therefore, my goal for this project is to research and test strategies for busy students to reduce stress.

I plan on spending my assigned Genius Hour time researching effective stress relievers for students. My intention is to focus on one strategy per week. After having done the research in class, I will then take the strategy and newfound knowledge and experiment with it during the week, whether this be trying different workouts, meditating, or wherever my research may lead me. I will then report my research findings on the blog for others to try and reflect on... we may share the same experiences or we may have differing views on the strategies I will post about, please share whatever experiences you have too - I would love if we could learn from one another!

What I'm really excited about is that I'm sure I can take some of this research into my future practice. Mental health issues are not just prevalent among post-secondary students, but also in many elementary school students as well. I hope that some of my research will lead me to strategies that I can include in my own practice to help students with their own well-being.

1 comment:

  1. Well-being is something everyone struggles with, even the best among us. It's quite admirable of you to want to help develop the knowledge and skills in your students at a young age to manage their own well-being. Great logging! Kudos! :)
    Dave

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