USC students looked to tackle stress and hone their time management skills at a workshop at the Center for Health and Well-Being Tuesday evening.
The workshop, led by stress management program manager Justina Siuba, combined the practice of journaling and discussion to expose students to new ways of prioritizing and planning.
Beatriz Almeida, a first-year advertising student, said she wanted to better herself by learning more about time management to help her stop procrastinating.
“I was hoping to find some ways to be able to organize myself better and be able to be like, ‘OK, is not the time for video games,’” Almeida said.
Siuba said she notices many patterns in the causes of stress for college students, and she says stress is one of the top academic impediments. To combat this issue, Siuba and the Healthy Campus Initiatives team created the Tackle Stress Tuesday series to help enhance stress management skills among college students.
“The more strategies and resources that are available to them, the more prepared they will feel to tackle the stress as it happens,” Siuba said.
Siuba led the participants through a few journaling exercises, asking students to write down the top things they value, the top things they prioritize, and what they currently have to do. Each journaling topic was followed by a discussion, where both Siuba and the participants commented and gave suggestions.
“This isn’t cookie cutter. What works for one person isn’t going to work for another,” Siuba said.
The students learned new time management strategies that they could use in their daily lives. These strategies aim to help students organize their most important and most urgent priorities while allowing them to have the flexibility of changing up their schedules.
Colby Hill, third-year computer science student, compared his experience at the time management workshop to the Tackle Stress Tuesday body image workshop he attended previously.
“This one was more geared towards me. This one was more useful to me because it’s something I struggle with daily and always need help with,” Hill said.
Some participants left with several new strategies, tactics and skills to better manage their time and to de-stress.
“I’m definitely going to start organizing my time better and using all the skills that I learned,” Almeida said.