Skyline’s Active Minds club hosted an ornament making activity for De-Stress Week in the Fireside Dining hall in building 6 on Nov. 18. The goal of this event was for students to socialize with peers while tapping into their creativity making beautiful decorations.

Perry Chen, a personal counselor and faculty advisor for Active Minds at Skyline, sat at the table to make sure that everything was going smoothly while assisting and directing students during this event.

“Active Minds is about raising mental health awareness, tweaking stigma, and addressing stress all in part of raising mental health awareness,” Chen said. “So, we do events like De-Stress Week to help people recognize… [that] you gotta take care of yourself.”

Chen said that it was important for us to stop and remind ourselves that we are in fact stressed.

When asked about challenges students might be facing this semester, Chen answered that if school was the only thing students had to worry about, 99% of the students would be fine; it was the stuff from the outside compounded with school that causes students to stress so much.

“Oh, another one! Weather can oddly stress people…” Chen said. “Today is a sunny day, but we get the cloudy days, we get the cold or rain that can sometimes dampen people’s moods. Very literally.”

Chen explained the other events Active Minds club have done in the past included screening events such as video games and Kahoot and one of the most popular, interacting with emotional support animals. 

“I hope that students take this and recognize that they can stop while they’re studying. To take a moment to rest their brains so they can be more effective in their studies later,” Chen said. “And not just through academic stress, but all the other stressors. Like, it’s important to take care of your mental health.”

Mia Inferrera, a first-year Skyline student who helped set up for the ornament making activity said she came to this event because of the stress from life and school.

“I feel like this semester, I tried to stay on top of things so I wouldn’t be as stressed at the end… I’m just trying to maintain the drive,” Inferrera said.

When asked if she thinks Skyline offers enough events like the de-stressing event activities, Inferrera answered that there probably wasn’t enough, as if this was her first time hearing about or being in one this whole semester.

“I mean, this whole week they’re doing things, so… I guess that’s really good. But maybe [we should have] a midway check in, because I know a few weeks ago a lot of people were stressed about midterms,” Inferrera said.

Rebekah Estam, a member of the Active Minds club, explains that the club holds two events throughout the semester where students can come wind down and do simple things like ornament making and canvas painting.

“We just want to create a very safe environment where people can take their minds completely off of their studies and just do something relaxing,” Estam said. 

Estam said that she herself was stressed with the finals coming up for her anatomy class and it’s a big part in order to get into a nursing program so she had to study pretty hard for it.

“I think that more [mental health] resources… should be advertised a lot better, because for this one and for others, it’s just been hard to see it on campus,” Estam said. “Just making it more publicized throughout the campus would be a good idea.”