After preparing for a couple days before all the students arrived, the South Asian students presented on their cultures for the international students. You can read more here, and see a few student interviews here, beginning with Olga!
Monica
Mohammad
Rohini
Kultwisiso
Shilpi
Mental health and mental illness are two different meanings. Mental health can be understood simply as emotionally and well-being. Mental illnesses are health conditions involving changing in thinking, emotion, or behavior. I really enjoyed this secession because it made me think clearly of what my emotions were. Today, my emotions were calm, tired, and excited. I was excited because I wanted to learn about how mental health affected India. In India, 1 in 5 people has some emotional and behavioral problems. This means that many people in India are suffering from common or severe mental disorder. Some of the people in India believes that mental health and illnesses does not exist. This plays a negative role in India because they failed to notice how dangerous mental problems can be. There are some people who cannot access to therapists because they do not seek mental attention nor have insurance. It will be great if the people could get free access to therapies and find solutions to help themselves.
Today was also tough and emotional because we had deep conversations about how an event affected us heavily. My story was more about a scary experience in my previous haunted house. It was really creepy and if I watched a scary movie, I will get really paranoid afterwards. The other people’s stories were very emotionally and when they cried as they were explaining their own story, I also cried alone with them. Even though it was sad and hard to talk about such events, it was also a good thing. I feel like we are able to connect more and understand each other better than before. I am glad that most of us were able to share our story and express our feelings to everyone. This is my most favorite secession out of the others so far. I also enjoyed doing quotes on my own pebble, but in the end, I had to give it away to someone else.
Today my group had a mental health workshop! I was nervous and didn’t know what to expect, but by the end of it, I was glad to share this experience with my group. When we first came in we learnt the difference between mental health and mental illness, often times people confuse both terms. However, mental health is your emotional and psychological well being as an individual. Meanwhile, mental illness refers to changes in thinking, emotion, or behavior. After that, we learnt about how mental health is seen throughout India. It was surprising to learn that India doesn’t like to talk about ‘mental’ health because it has the word ‘mental’ in it. Mental, to them means crazy or mad and nobody in India wants to be labeled that so they rather pretend mental health is not real.
Some activities we had to do was act out a story regarding a schizophrenic person in India. The actors were: Gabe, Ashley, David, Nailah, and me. The rest of the group was supposed to identify key symptoms of schizophrenia in the patient. This was a great activity because the acting was PHENOMENAL. Gabe truly deserves an award, as well as the rest of the cast. Then, my group formed a safe circle were we were all able to share a personal story with each other. At first, I was hesitant to disclose personal information because I don’t like feeling vulnerable, but I felt really safe and comfortable with my group. Hearing everyone’s story really opened my eyes and allowed me to see everyone in a new light. We all had/have our own struggles and the fact that everyone was willing to open up made us become much closer. So, I’m thankful for this session because it allowed me to vent and let go of heavy baggage I was carrying.
Finally, at the end we were all giving a rock and had to write positive messages for someone to read. I enjoyed doing this because I like to make someone’s day brighter. Today was such an emotionally daring day that spending some time writing and thinking positive thoughts really helped me feel better.
Today we learned about ecological sustainability. Their is a problem on our hands in today’s society and is called global warming. As society tries to deny this truth with false facts and phony politicians who are funded by big corporations which are the major causes of this issue. The major problems used to be called climate change when scientist could use ten year studies to analyze trends but now it has become a crisis that is becoming more evident to our everyday lives. The sad thing is is that it is man made which mean it was caused by us humans whereas this also effects the animals who have no say on how we pollute the world. Meaning the things that we do is leading towards the destruction of our planet and its in our control to do something about it. In addition to learning about this pressing issue also contributes to my understanding of the youth citizenship in many ways. It has shown me that in each and every one of our communities around the world we are all contributing to the problem. We as citizens must do our job of making a cleaner and healthier earth with something as simple as using less plastic bottles or even using a compost bin.
The day I had today was very different from the typical day in my neighborhood usually I would go out on my normal routine of waking up, eating breakfast, going outside, playing , eating and then probably going to sleep not really being conscious of the waste can I contributed but today I was able to have a workshop that made me mindful and able to see the consequences of my actions not only i my community and one like it but different communities globally. Also I was offered solutions to problems so it was no excuse why I couldn’t help.
Lastly, with the knowledge that I have a gained today I also learned something from my peers. I’ve learned that despite all of the negative regarding global warming for example the graphs that show how fossil fuels are destroying ecosystems, disrupting oceans currents while causing rises in sea levels and abnormal weather patterns there are people out in the world who still have hope. Hope of a better future and they explained that there are people out in the world making a difference making a difference we all need to lend a helping hand to each other if when want our children and grandchildren to experience the wonders and beauties of earth as we do and not have it be destroyed.