How to Maintain Wellbeing While Balancing School and Work Life: Our 3 SEAB Event Takeaways
By Virginia Richards
Several months ago, the Student Employee Advisory Board (SEAB) of Student Centers organized a wellness-centered workshop. This workshop was a collaboration between SEAB and the Center for Student Wellbeing and a professional development opportunity for our students. This workshop was an opportunity for students to learn some skills on how to more easily manage the demands of their educational and professional pursuits with insight from mental health specialist, Richard W. Gorman. Here are some of our takeaways from the event:
- It is impossible to live up to the standards of the “perfect Vanderbilt student.”
As Vanderbilt students, we are expected to take up a difficult course load, participate in many extracurriculars (while also holding leadership positions), obtain competitive internship positions, and have a robust social life. That is a lot to take on! We must understand that by stretching ourselves so thin, that we directly contribute to burnout and our anxiousness.
- The people around you also experience difficulty balancing school and work life.
While it may look like all of your friends and peers are balancing these different spheres of life seamlessly, in reality, everyone experiences feelings of anxiety when it comes to the responsibilities of school and work. While difficult, what is most important is to not compare yourself to others and understand that everyone is on their own wellness journey. With time, we all learn how to manage life’s responsibilities and our stressors more seamlessly.
- Touch into your stress relief techniques.
Towards the conclusion of the workshop, we discussed our favorite ways to mediate stress on a daily basis. Students brought up techniques such as guided meditation, yoga, and breathing exercises as ways to bring down their heart rate and make them feel more prepared to take on the rest of their day. Engaging with these techniques regularly will boost your mindfulness and make navigating stressful situations much easier.
We hope you find these takeaways helpful, especially amid our current finals season. Best of luck to all of our students!