Reflective writing and discussion about your stressors at school

Today we're going to do some reflective writing and have small group walking discussion focused on things that create negative stress for you at Uni. These thoughts and writings will develop into some larger discussions about stress at Uni that we will address in an optional writing project that you could choose for your fourth quarter project (more on that later).

To begin with today, I'd like you to write for ten minutes about what stresses you out at school. When you think about negative stress––stress that gives you anxiety or physical pain, that makes it hard to sleep or concentrate, that inhibits your creativity, productivity, and/or your general sense of wellbeing––what sources and/or situations can you identify that create this stress? This is a free-write, so go ahead and pour your thoughts on the page, create a bullet list and then go back and add detail as it occurs to you, or use whatever other writing strategies make sense to you and allow you to get your thoughts on the page. 

Then we're going to go for a short walk and talk about the people in our lives that we associate most with our stress. In groups of two or three, share a summary of what stresses you out about school and then try to identify who creates this stress for you. It may be a number of people (including, possibly, yourself), but try to identify the top two or three.