Positive Pathways seminar: Students debrief coping methods for dealing with stress

Students had an opportunity to debrief the effects that the Positive Pathways event on Oct. 2 had on their stress levels during the Positive Pathways seminar that was held in DeMoss Hall Oct. 27.  

The idea for the seminar stemmed from an assessment conducted by the Student Health Center and Wellness Initiatives offices, which showed that students needed extra support in the dimension of their emotional well-being, especially as the semester begins to overload students with tasks and responsibilities. This training offered students different suggestions for things to do to help them relieve stress, such as journaling, and the students were invited back for a reevaluation to see if the methods they had previously been given were useful to them. 

“It is a four-week long program; the first session was on Oct. 2. And in the weeks that the students were not meeting in person, they were given journaling prompts about the content that we presented to them on Oct. 2,” Kelsey Kaiser, the public health communications coordinator, said. “And today on Oct. 27, we’re coming back together to kind of debrief — see what they learned, how the content helped them, engage with maybe the stress that they
were experiencing.”

 Kaiser expressed the importance of the Positive Pathways event for students by detailing how stressful a college student’s life can be. The constant management of their schoolwork, jobs and student life only adds to their already high stress levels. This brings even more challenges because of the constant scheduling one would have to manage in addition to finding time for friends and loved ones. The Positive Pathways event  gives students adequate training on how to cope with these different types of stresses at home, so students can find a greater sense of control and resiliency in their lives. 

“We have found that students altogether are mostly resilient, but being able to know what resilience means, what it means to them, as well as being able to practice having some gratitude. So that’s not necessarily like being happy all the time,” Kaiser said. “It could be finding the small things to be joyful about.”

According to Kaiser, students from any major or department can participate in these initiatives and are encouraged to attend such events to gain helpful knowledge about stress management and stress coping mechanisms they can take with them throughout their semesters here at Liberty University.   

“From personal experience of being a college student, I figured that students could meet here and learn about topics of coping with stress,” Kaiser said. “Because college is a bit stressful, I also thought of topics of resilience as well as gratitude — and that’s how Positive Pathways came to be.”

Millan is a news reporter for the Liberty Champion