Deliverable 1: Entering the Conversation by Reflecting on One’s Approach to Wellness

Introduction: 

College can be a bittersweet time in a person’s life. You’ve devoted several years of your life to hours of studying, establishing friendships, building relationships, and engaging in multiple meaningful extracurricular activities. It’s no wonder many people consider their college years as “the best years of their life.” However, this is also often a destabilizing time that can bring stress and anxiety. Students sometimes struggle to figure out how to manage the ambiguities about what is coming after graduation, or with the transition from the “college undergraduate student” identity to other identities. 

Though the variety of academic, personal, and professional stressors one experiences in college can be disrupting on their own, the first six months of 2020 have witnessed several additional challenges of college students’ efforts to be healthy. Novel coronavirus emerging as a global pandemic, unemployment rates skyrocketing across the globe, protests, and unrest related to declining trust in law enforcement and social and political institutions: these and other developments have likely complicated college students’ pursuit of wellness.

Assignment:

The objective of this reflective paper is for you to increase your self-awareness around your own challenges and to use this knowledge for your benefit as you transition from your college communities to your post-college communities.

To achieve the goal listed in the preceding paragraph, compose a three – four-page paper that showcases your thoughtful reflection on several of the prompts below. 

1. What is your definition of wellness?

2. What has worked well for you in the past in cultivating your own wellness? What hasn’t worked so well?

3. What is an issue that you are struggling with currently and that you want to change or improve on in the short term (within the next 6 months)? You should not pick an issue that is academic or professional-related. It should not be something related to grades, graduate school, or employment. 

4. Why and how would the change be beneficial to you?

5. What strategies could you implement in order to achieve some success in making the change?

6. Who (friends, family, classmates, faculty, staff) could be in your support group to assist you in making this change?

7. How can you practice self-care and self-compassion as you work on your personal issue?

8. How could change or improvement on your personal issue affect your future academic or professional aspirations?

Consider responding to Prompt One as it is designed as an “introductory prompt.” Responding to Prompt Two will be helpful for your own audience since you will likely provide examples of how you approach achieving or maintaining wellness. Prompt Three is a central question, and most of Prompts Four – Eight connect back to Prompt Three. Of course, you may choose which four Prompts you would like to respond to, but the paper should be cohesive and your responses should follow a logical flow.

Additional Expectations:

In offer the following four texts, my goal is to simply start a conversation about wellness. But having started the conversation, please contribute additional voices to the discussion about conceptualizing wellness and developing approaches to pursuing it. Here’s our initial reading/listening/viewing list: 

1. Brene Brown, “Brene on Anxiety, Calm + Over/Under-Functioning,” Unlocking Us podcast (3 April 2020), https://brenebrown.com/podcast/brene-on-anxiety-calm-over-under-functioning/

2. Sangu Delle, “There’s No Shame in Taking Care of Your Mental Health,“ https://www.ted.com/talks/sangu_delle_there_s_no_shame_in_taking_care_of_your_mental_health/transcript?language=en

3. Anindya Kundu, “Roses in Concrete: A Perspective on how Agency and Grit can Foster the Success of All Students, Especially those Most Disadvantaged“ http://www.johndeweysociety.org/the-journal-of-school-and-society/files/2016/04/Vol32_4.pdf

4. Mark Manson, “F*** Your Feelings,” https://markmanson.net/fuck-your-feelings 

As you develop your response, integrate ideas from two of these sources and/or additional ones that you want to bring to this conversation about how college students can achieve wellness to inform and illustrate your reflective essay. For instance, you might use Kundu’s notions of grit and agency as a foundation for thinking about developing a support group for realizing a change in how you approach developing or maintaining wellness. 

Make certain to properly cite these sources within your essay and document these sources on a Works Cited page. 

Please keep in mind that the Works Cited page does not count as one of the three-four pages of your essay; it is a separate page that follows the final page of an essay/article. 

Criteria for Evaluation: 

Criteria for Evaluation: Satisfactory responses to this prompt will meet all the following criteria:

1. Be composed according to MLA guidelines for format and      style and be three – four pages in length (essays may exceed 4 pages, but      this is not an expectation);
2. Include a Works Cited section for the minimum of two      sources whose ideas are integrated in the essay; 
3. Meet an academic audience’s expectations for grammar,      punctuation, spelling, tone, and diction; 
4. Commence with an appropriate introductory section, one      that introduces the text and explains your essay’s purpose; 
5. Address at least four of the eight prompt choices      listed on the Assignment Prompt;
6. Develop one’s response appropriately (with anecdotes,      personal experiences, examples or ideas from outside sources).