Student-Run Grief Support Group — starting Tuesday, 8 p.m.

STUDENT-RUN GRIEF SUPPORT GROUP

(Sponsored by the Office of Counseling and Psychological Services–CAPS)

Meets: Weekly Tuesdays, beginning Sept. 12

Time: 8:00pm

Location: Solarium (Room 201)  (2nd fl., Davison Health Center)

Intended to create a network of support for those who have experienced the death

of a loved one. Please feel free to come and leave when it is convenient for you.

For more information, please contact: egmurphy@wesleyan.edu

 

Resilience Retreat 10/6-8/17: Forms due September 15

Resilience Retreat 2017:  Are you yearning to feel more grounded, capable, and confident?  We invite you to participate in an off-campus, all-expense paid, interfaith weekend retreat from October 6-8 to help you enjoy increased resiliency by discovering and cultivating your own inner strength and peace.  During this program, we will discuss key components of resilience, identify individual areas of strength and potential growth, learn specific tools and practices that can help us become more resilient, and reflect on the role of our faith/spirituality.  Space is limited!  For more information, please contact Rev. Tracy Mehr-Muska from the Office of Religious and Spiritual Life at tmehrmuska@wesleyan.edu.  To register, please fill out this form prior to 5pm on September 15https://goo.gl/forms/dQ7ERXw6CUjXhPzC3.

Counseling and Psychological Services (CAPS)

Counseling and Psychological Services welcomes the class of 2021!

Your first semester at Wesleyan may be the most fun you’ve ever had, or it may be the toughest transition you’ve ever experienced.  Or it could be both.  The clinicians at CAPS are ready to meet with you, whether for one session or many, to assist you as you navigate your new life at Wes.  No problem is too big or too small to talk over with one of our therapists.  We see students who are struggling with academics, social life, adjustment to college, and relationships, as well as students who experience depression, anxiety, panic, trauma, eating and body image concerns, and many other mental health issues.  We offer individual sessions and medication management as well as support groups and workshops.  If you’ve never met with a therapist before, schedule an appointment to see what it’s like!  We are an enthusiastic staff who love working with college students.  We offer crisis visits for students who are too distressed to wait for a regular appointment, and we have on-call clinicians available for after-hours emergencies during the academic year.

We are open for regular services on Monday, September 4th, but you can contact us to schedule an appointment beginning August 28th.  Call us at 860.685.2910 or 860.685.3143.  You can also email us at counseling@wesleyan.edu.

Looking forward to meeting you soon!

The Davison Health Center

Welcome to the Davison Health Center:

The Health Center is staffed by a clinical team ready to keep you healthy while residing on campus.  We provide care for illness and injuries, as well as wellness visits ranging from immunizations (i.e. flu shots), sexual health screenings and testing, travel consultations and nutrition counseling.  We are open six days a week and have a physician on call when closed.  We schedule by appointment, but students can always call and speak with a nurse who will triage you to the most appropriate visit based on your concerns.  Call 860-685-2470.

The Health Center administers the Wesleyan school insurance plan.  All students must have private insurance or enroll in the school plan annually.  If you have not yet done so, please waive or enroll at www.gallagherstudent.com/wesleyan.  The deadline has been extended to September 14.

Academic Support Resources

So where do you go or who do you call if you need academic support or study resources to help ensure your success in mastering course material, managing your time, or clearing your head to focus on work?

Check out the amazing list on the

Student Academic Resources homepage!

Some resources to highlight include your class dean–Dean Brown–and your faculty advisor (for academic and general advice and referrals), your professors (for each course), peer tutors (for course material, available after the drop/add period), the peer advisors (especially for study skills and planning), accessibility services (for a range of accommodations), the dean for international student affairs, the Writing and Math Workshops, the Quantitative Analysis Center, and the Language Resource Center.

There can, at times, be a fine line between academic and personal life, so if you need to regain your academic focus and figure out something that has been distracting you from your coursework, don’t hesitate to call Counseling and Psychological Services (CAPS) to set up an appointment with a therapist or contact one of the chaplains in the Office of Religious and Spiritual Life (ORSL).  The Health Center and WesWell are also good resources in this regard as are the Office of Equity and Inclusion and the new Student Equity Resource Center.

We want you to be intellectually engaged, challenged and successful, so take advantage of the resources in place to support you in the process.

Get Healthy, Stay Healthy and Be Involved with WesWell!

WesWell is the Office of Health Education located in the Davison Health Center. WesWell aims to be visible, engaging and support students in living their best, healthy lives. There are many ways for new students to get involved! WesWell’s Peer Health Advocates (PHAs) organize outreach events and interactive workshops throughout the year on topics like: self-care, safer sex, alcohol and other drugs, bystander intervention and even some really unique events like massage for stress relief during finals. In addition, students can meet with professional staff in WesWell for an individual session on a wide variety of topics–all the topics already mentioned and others like, learning how to get better sleep and transitioning to a new environment.

WesWell wants to meet the needs of every Wes student. For this reason, we work hard to support our substance-free students and our students in recovery. If you are a student in recovery wanting to make connections with other students in recovery and/or find resources please email: recovery@wesleyan.edu to get connected.

For more information on WesWell please visit our website: www.wesleyan.edu/weswell

To stay updated on WesWell events and PHA activities please connect with us via Facebook: www.facebook.com/weswell

 

Thoughts from a Peer Advisor: “Being a Self-Advocate: Communication is the Key to Success”

Being A Self-Advocate: Communication is the Key to Success

According to the New Oxford American Dictionary, the verb advocate means to “publicly recommend or support.” Advocacy, the noun conjugation of advocate, is defined as “public support for or recommendation for a particular cause or policy.” However, self-advocate and self-advocacy are not officially defined in any dictionary that I could find, and yet they are incredibly important – shall I say, essential – to everyday life. But what do they mean?

Self-advocacy is defined by wrightslaw.com as the following:

“Self-advocacy is learning how to speak up for yourself, making your own decisions about your own life, learning how to get information so that you can understand things that are of interest to you, finding out who will support you in your journey, knowing your right and responsibilities, problem solving, listening and learning, reaching out to others when you need help and friendship, and learning about self-determination.”

Now, that is a lot of information, and a lot of words, for what can be described in a much more concise, basic way: take the regular old word advocacy, and reflect it back onto yourself. So, essentially, self-advocacy could simply be defined as “public support for or recommendation for…” yep, you guessed it, “…yourself.”

To be a self-advocate, it is important to be able to represent yourself and speak up for yourself in the most effective way not only to your network of peers and professors, but also to your wider-ranging and more general community. Sometimes it can be incredibly difficult to speak up for yourself or ask strangers, or even peers and professors, for help, but that can be imperative in an educational setting. Too often, bright and engaged students (read: all Wesleyan students) fall through the cracks because they simply are uncomfortable asking for guidance and support.

Now, it is easy to say “just ask,” but it is much harder to actually do it. If and when you face discomfort, or hesitate when preparing to ask for something, whether it be an explanation for a grade, an extension on an assignment, or simply a time to meet, just remember this: all of the people you meet at Wesleyan truly want you to succeed. They are your support network, your safety net. They want you to be a self-advocate, simply so that they can accommodate and adjust to your wants and needs to further increase your likelihood of success. My advice? If you feel anticipation before saying something, sending an email, or even knocking on a door at office hours, take a deep breath, count to three, and try it. All you need is a split second of courage and the worst part, the anticipation part, will be over. Try it over and over again until it becomes more comfortable. And believe me, it will.

Another key part of being a self-advocate is communication. It can be incredibly difficult to articulate what you want to say in an in-person conversation, simply because you must listen, absorb, and process what the other person is saying in a very short amount of time. So, do not be afraid to take your time! Tell the other person you need a moment to think, or simply reflect back to them what they said to you to make sure you have heard it correctly. In-person conversation is an art, and the only way to develop your skills is to use them. Online conversation, however, is a totally different ballgame.

When corresponding online, or over the phone, remember that you are not there to represent yourself. Your facial expression and body language cannot help you (or hurt you!), so you must put it all into the email, text, or phone call. The other person cannot see you, but this can be a good thing. You can have notes written down, or typed up, so that you make sure you get to every point you want to make, or question you want to ask. Just remember that when sending an email, especially to a professor, always be as formal and respectful as possible; professors get hundreds of emails every day and will not be eager to respond to a “yo, sup?” Address the recipient by the most formal title they have, whether it be professor, Dr., Mr., Mrs., or Ms., and sign it with a thank you and your full name and class year. And, when in doubt, use your self-advocacy and communication skills: ask someone more experienced than you for help! Teamwork makes the dream work, and crafting the perfect email can definitely be a team activity.

Self-advocacy is all-encompassing; it is fluid, and changes depending on who is exhibiting it. One person’s strengths may be another person’s weaknesses; remember that you can take advantage the resources and people around you simply by asking. Try not to get discouraged; your first year at a new place can be incredibly difficult, but, like I said before, remember that everyone at Wesleyan wants you to succeed. As long as you are your best self, you will thrive. Go Wes!
Thanks for reading!

Haley Brumberger, 2020, Academic Peer Advisor

Transitioning to College

June 2017

College life can be exciting, but it will differ significantly from your past experience. New environments, new friends, new classes, new ideas, new experiences are yours for the taking.  And while there is familiarity with being a student, since that’s what you’ve been doing for most of your life, you may need to adapt your study habits to fit into a less structured and more demanding academic environment. And you may be living on your own for the first time, responsible for everything from getting up on time for class to doing your own laundry to budgeting your money.  While it may seem a little early to be thinking about this, keep in mind these few suggestions for managing the transition:

  • Talk with friends and family members who have recently attended college about their experiences transitioning to campus life — the challenges, the joys, the things they wish they knew starting out. You may be able to glean some words of wisdom!
  • Make a plan with your parents/guardians for how frequently you will talk and email. Strive for regular, but not daily, contact. It will help you concentrate on adjusting to Wesleyan while still reducing the likelihood of feeling homesick.
  • Once on campus, seek out opportunities to get involved in one or two activities outside the classroom. Focus on quality, not quantity. You have plenty of time over the next four years to try out everything!
  • Being a college student does not have to equal being unhealthy. Strive for balanced eating habits, a regular sleep pattern and a manageable workload.
  • Keep up your exercise routine at Wesleyan’s great athletic facilities. Physical activity greatly helps with reducing stress levels and with mental acuity.
  • Ask for help if you need it academically or personally. We want to help you succeed!