Welcome to our College-in-Covid series! In this series, we pen a letter to each college class to start you off in your first semester/quarter back on campus. Good luck! Dear Juniors, Congratulations on being one step closer to graduation! You are halfway done with your bachelor’s degree and that alone is something to celebrate. Junior year is monumental and you have a pretty good idea of what to expect. During these past three years of your college experience, you are not onl

Welcome to our College-in-Covid series! In this series, we pen a letter to each college class to start you off in your first semester/quarter back on campus. Good luck! Dear Sophomores, Congratulations on no longer being a freshman and moving one step closer to the finish line. I know freshman year was difficult, being that your first college year experience was mostly virtual in the midst of a pandemic. but, I commend you for your perseverance and strength as you learned to

Welcome to our College-in-Covid series! In this series we pen a letter to each college class to start you off in your first semester/quarter back on campus. Good luck! Dear Freshman, Congratulations. You’re going to college! That’s such a huge accomplishment and you should be proud of yourself. The “back to school” season is officially upon us. To help those of you who are about to embark on a new year filled with long study sessions, midterms, and finals, I will share some o

After a delay of one year, the summer of 2021 Tokyo Olympics is finally here! Restricted access and absent fans have changed how the Olympics look this time. Athletes have had to deal with their ‘“athletic identity’’ stripped away due to the pandemic. More notably, mental health has been at the forefront all over the media. Athletes such as United States gymnast Simone Biles and Japanese tennis player Naomi Osaka have both stepped down to prioritize their mental health and ov

International Self-Care Day is on July 24th, 2021. Self-care is the act of valuing yourself, accepting yourself, learning to love yourself, feeling abundant, and feeling worthy of your own time. It doesn’t cost anything to self-care, but it takes effort. It’s a conscious decision to invest in ourselves and in our mental wellness day in and day out. With stress and constantly meeting the needs of others, it is incredibly easy to feel burnt out by the time the weekend comes aro

Welcome back to part 2 of our social media and mental wellness blog! In part 1, I introduced you to the positive and negative effects of social media. I also shared five easy wellness tips to maintain a healthy relationship with your social media (let us know which one you’ve tried!). Before sharing an interview I conducted with an expert about finding a balance between social media and our mental wellness, it’s helpful to understand the vicious cycle of social media use on o

Social media is one of the fastest-growing tools worldwide and has intertwined in every part of our life. Just think about it for a second — What do you check once you wake up? Is it your notification tabs on your screen? Do you scroll mindlessly on your feed until you drift to sleep? How many hours per day do you spend on your social media? (If you own an iPhone, you can check your “screen time” usage under your Settings — it’s shocking...) A recent study showed that in the

Like most of you, I spent a lot of time at home these past months. Socially distancing has forced us to find fun activities within our four walls, and one of mine was watching documentaries to learn more about the world. Streaming services like Netflix, give us a wide range of different documentaries, but I became interested in ones that focused on nature. The latest one I watched was Seaspiracy on Netflix and it really made me think about my living habits and effects on the

It’s March but the days are still short, cold, and dark. It is the time after the Winter holidays, where many experience the so-called “Winter Blues”. The time where we patiently wait for sunshine and warmer weather. If you feel sadder than usual and unmotivated to do anything, don’t worry. You are not alone. While the ‘Winter Blues’ (or how I like to say it ‘seasonal moodiness’) is common during this time of year, this year is very different. With the pandemic still going on

Happy Valentine’s Day! Today is the day that reminds us to share some extra love with the people we most care about. For some, it’s a day filled with love, chocolate, and sometimes nice presents. But it’s a day to show that you care about another person. The feeling of someone caring about us is special — it’s what we desire as humans. But before giving love to others, it is important to learn how to love and take care of ourselves first. One way of doing that is practicing s

It’s been over a year since COVID-19 first started in the US. And unfortunately, many of us know someone who has been infected. Whether you have had the virus, many have faced physical and mental health challenges as we all are trying our best to navigate through challenging times. We are learning to adapt to a “new normal” that has made us change daily routines and adapt to our newfound aim in life: to stay healthy and free of the virus. In the early days of the pandemic, th