Minutes: September 22, 2011
Claire, Katie, Laura, Kate, Nicole, Juliana, Liz, Andrew, Karissa (briefly, feel better!), Angela, Pat, and Jordan were present.
We did an icebreaker with the infamous question volleyball.
Telling Your Story Event
What: A night of music and conversation
When: Friday October 7th from 7-11 p.m.
Where: Skutt Ballroom
Monday, October 3rd we will have a canvas on the mall decorated with our words, and students will be invited to add their own words to the canvas.
The night of the event, Christian Meyer, John (Karissa’s beau), and Hilary’s brother (Pat forgets his name) will be playing!
In between artists someone from our group will go up and share part of their story. We will be wearing a word to describe our story on a white t-shirt, explaining how that word plays a part in our story.
Afterward, we will have mingle time and an opportunity to share our stories with those who ask if we didn’t get up in front of everyone to speak.
We are working on getting the event in Student News and putting up flyers. (If you would like to distribute flyers around campus, they will be in Pat’s Kiewit mailbox.) If you’re in another organization, please try to make an announcement about the event. We will also be making a Facebook event.
We need to decide who is going to go up and talk. Email Pat if you’re interested and give him a general outline of what you would like to say. We will be making t-shirts at our meeting next week.
Also, Dr. Ozar (our moderator) should be coming to our meeting next week!
UChapter Values
Tonight we discussed community:
Life lived together.
Sharing the whole of who we are.
Working, playing, eating, learning.
People who really know you – to know and be known.
To care for others and allow them to care for you.
We discussed what community means to us. Some thoughts shared were…
All of us here together is community.
Community makes you who you are, influences you.
Real community is a place where you can be who you really are and not hide any aspects of yourself.
Community is people supporting you.
Sometimes we need space, but a lot of the time we need to be around people even if we’re just being quiet together.
After Trauma, Teaching Hope
It was about staying positive in hardship.
People who have this mindset, even if they experience a tough emotional time, bounce back quicker than other people. Further, they will have a greater appreciation for life after that rough period.
When this method was implemented in universities, rates of depression and emotional instability dropped.
This might be a good way to help others suffering with depression.
We discussed how counseling is an evaluation of your worldview and an effort to change it to a more positive worldview.
Pessimists are more likely to struggle with learned helplessness. This is an easy downward spiral to fall into.
We talked about how so many military people come back with PTSD or brain injury. Maybe this is a good way to deal with this rather than just admitting them into a hospital setting. However, some people may think going through this program makes them seem weak or they just don’t want to put themselves in a vulnerable situation so that is a challenge.
We discussed how important it is to have support systems. (Like TWLOHA!)
Finally, Pat told us that we will be having “share your story sessions” in the future. If you’re interested in sharing your story, send Pat an email, and he will set up a date with you.
We ended the meeting with highs and lows.
