Celebrate, Recharge and Reflect

Celebrate, Recharge and Reflect
A year for the history books

Celebrate!

The 20W academic year is over. First and foremost it is time to celebrate. It is important for all of you to celebrate your accomplishments and also your passage through difficult times. An extra shout-out to those BASC students graduating this year. Well done! You have all our respect for having come through this past year of studies, in the midst of a pandemic, and fully online. Your resilience has paid off and it is now time for you to celebrate your successes, take some time to recharge, and then reflect upon what you learned from the challenges of the past year. It is also a great time for you to set goals for the next year.


Martin Dee / UBC Brand & Marketing

Recharge

After celebration comes a period of relaxation. Take full advantage of the next four months to recharge. Here are a few suggestions of what you can do to bring your health and wellness to the forefront and truly recharge before returning in 21W.

1) Prioritize Sleep.  If you haven’t been sleeping well over the last few months, try focusing on improving your quality of sleep over summer.  Having good sleep hygiene is one of the most important ways you can improve your overall physical and mental health and reduce anxiety. There are specific actionable things that you can do or avoid doing that will help you to sleep.

In the 2019 TED talk Sleep is your Superpower, Matt Walker outlines just how important sleep is for us for our health, both mental and physical and also how important it is for our ability to learn.  He states that “sleep deprivation shuts down your memory inbox” making it difficult for anything else to come in.   “You need sleep after your learning to hit the save button”.

Some simple things that you can do to help improve your sleep include:

  • Prioritize your sleep – don’t look at as something that is optional
  • Reduce or avoid screen time close to the time you are going to sleep
  • Avoid alcohol
  • Avoid caffeine
  • Regularity – go to bed at the same time and get up at the same time
  • Sleep in a dark room
  • Sleep in a cool room (65F or 18C is optimal)
  • Keep daytime naps short (20 min or so)
  • If you are tossing and turning, get up for a bit and go to another room and do something else for a while, as soon as you are sleepy return to your bedroom to sleep. This helps your brain to associate your bedroom with somewhere you sleep rather than somewhere you are awake.
  • It also may help to listen to some calming music


Jamil Rhajiak / UBC Brand & Marketing

2)  Learn to meditate.  Start with just a few minutes per day and challenge yourself to slowly work up to 10 minutes.  Incorporating even just 5-10 minutes of meditation per day into your schedule will do much to help you approach life’s challenges with strength and resilience.  Apps such as the Calm App , Headspace, and Insight Timer (which is free!) have meditations that you can use to focus your mind and relieve stress and anxiety.  There are also countless free options available to you on Youtube.

3)  Incorporate mindfulness into your everyday activities.  Mindfulness is a word you see everywhere today.  Meditation is part of mindfulness practice and can certainly help you to become more mindful, however there are a vast number of things you can do beyond meditation, including mindful eating, movement, and listening.

Jon Kabat Zinn is an American professor emeritus of medicine who created the Stress Reduction Clinic and the Center for Mindfulness, Healthcare and Society at the University of Massachusetts Medical School.  He describes mindfulness as: “awareness that arises through paying attention, on purpose, in the present moment, non-judgmentally”.   If you are interested in exploring mindfulness a bit more while you are on your break there are a vast number of resources out there for you to access.  Some recommended podcasts for you to listen to are Mindfulness for Beginners or Mindfulness in Eight Weeks.  You can also check out Jon Kabat-Zinn’s video Mindfulness, Healing and Wisdom in a Time of Covid 19.


Paul H. Joseph / UBC Brand & Marketing

Reflect

Once you have celebrated and taken a bit of time to relax and recharge you will be in the right frame of mind to take some time to reflect on the 20W academic year and consider how you wish to approach 21W.

Knowledge is power. You now know much more about how you best learn than when you started your journey with online learning. What did you learn that you can bring forward with as you return back to learning in-person? You know best how you learn and what doesn’t work for you. This is your degree. How do you wish to proceed? What are the successes you intend to build upon? What are some of the challenges that you faced and how can you use critical thinking, problem solving and creativity to help mitigate and/ or build upon them for next year? Any planning you do now can be used as an antidote to worrying later.

Consider approaching your reflection and goal setting in a mindful way. Be careful about comparisons and remember you are unique and have your own path to follow.


Jamil Rhajiak / UBC Brand & Marketing

Set goals for Fall/Winter 2021.

Do you have an academic goal you wish to achieve in 21W or even start working on them over the summer? Do you have a personal goal you wish to achieve in 21W, or beyond? Focus more on your health and wellbeing? Give back to your community? Have more fun? Reduce the amount of time you spend on social media? All of these things are achieved by setting goals.

Make sure that your goals are S.M.A.R.T.

Specific – what do you want to accomplish and why?  Who else is included?  When?  What is your timeline?
Measurable – how will you measure whether you have been successful?  How often will you measure how you are doing?
Attainable – given the circumstances, is this goal achievable? What steps do you need to take?
Relevant – does the goal you have chosen pertain directly to what you are trying to achieve?
Time Frame – what is the deadline?  Is it realistic?

Whatever your goals are it is important that you work out what they are and then take action.

If you would like help from an Academic Advisor with goal setting, course planning, or want more information about health and wellness resources available to you please reach out to us at Engineering Academic Services.  If you are an upper year student, we recommend that you reach out to your specific program advisor for help with course planning. We look forward to speaking with you. For those of you graduating, we wish you much joy in your continued journey in life and journey towards becoming professional engineers.  Bravo!

Claudia Buffone
Associate Academic Advisor

 

Posted on: April 28, 2021