Last week I had finished the last of my first round of prelims, and I needed a good de-stressing activity. I decided to go to the self-care workshop, and I had a great time. The workshop started with Sarah, a counselor from CAPS at Gannett, telling us about all of the different resources available to help us deal with stress. Like the majority of students at Cornell, I deal with stress almost daily. However, I have never been to any of the programs because I have always felt my stress is manageable on my own and I didn’t want to waste the counselors’ time. Sarah said that lots of people felt this way, and that’s why they have a lot of group discussions and activities, like the pumpkin carving, to reduce stress. She also told us about a lot of activities we could do on our own to reduce stress, such as coloring, exercising, and pumpkin carving!
Rose library was filled with pumpkins for this activity, and everyone there got to carve their own. The relatively simple activity was very stress relieving and was a great opportunity to meet other Rose residents. I made some new friends and also got the chance to talk to Sarah personally. We also got to take the pumpkins home with us, so now I have a festive fall decoration to help me to relax.
This sounds like you had a wonderful time Cierra. I hope to carve a pumpkin this year for the first time at some point. I will definitely take advantage of the opportunity next time I hear of it.
I definitely agree with Lily when I say this sounded like a ton of fun, and I wish I could have attended the event! (Maybe one day I’ll FINALY actually carve a pumpkin.) On another note, I love that this workshop was a place for people to get together and learn about ways to better take care of themselves emotionally because, like you said, it’s something all of us here at Cornell can definitely learn about.