I’m Back!

Hey there, Deac families! Did you miss me last week? I’m back in the office and happy to report that Class of ’27 is well on the road to recovery following removal of tonsils and adenoids. Felt strange to be a full week without blogging, but it is also a slow time on campus with the students gone so not sure you missed too much.

Couple of special notes for P’21s:

We’ve discovered an error in the First-Year Parent and Family Calendar that I hope you have received by now in your Deac’s Forestry 101 book mailing.  The Health Insurance Enrollment/Waiver form is listed as being due June 1st. In reality, the enrollment period opens June 1st and closes on August 1st. My apologies to those of you who felt like you were scrambling.  (As an aside, this was our first time ever doing this kind of paper calendar, and I was afraid that we’d make an error; no matter how many sets of eyes, it seems inevitable to miss something. Grr. )

Our New Student Receptions website is up and running. Please take a look and if there is a reception in your area, we hope you and your family will attend. I’m still in the process of making all the registrations live, so check back if your area is not online yet.

And for our P’18s, ’19s, and ’20s: we are always looking for great current student ambassadors to attend these New Student Receptions and help meet the incoming students and answer questions. If your Deac is going to be in one of these cities this summer and wants to volunteer, he/she can email my colleague David Myers at myerdm11@wfu.edu.  We have a few spots in each city, so the early bird gets the worm.

Here’s an article that some of my Campus Life colleagues mentioned in social media last week: High-achieving Ivy League students often miss an important lesson about how to succeed in life.  The gist of the story is that high-achieving students are racking up impressive lists of achievements and accolades, but at a cost. The cure for the situation, according to the author, is students need to learn the critical lesson of self-care during college.

This is a subject I hear a lot about from the students I talk to, many of whom feel overextended but are reluctant to drop out of an activity or say no to an opportunity that might stretch them too thin. Sometimes the reason is FOMO (Fear Of Missing Out) – if I don’t do X, am I going to miss something amazing? Will my friends leave me behind? Will I be looked at as lazy? – and other times the reason is feeling pinched to build a resume with as many activities as possible.

I try to gently remind students of one of my favorite maxims: self-care is smart. You can’t be a kickbutt student if you are too tired or too stressed to do your best work, nor can you function at your best without enough sleep and your body being in good shape (not just exercise-wise, but in the sense of you are healthy enough to fight off the common cold because you haven’t run yourself ragged).

So as you have your Deacs home this summer, think about whether there is a way to incorporate discussions of good self-care into your conversations. Sometimes a plug from mom, dad, or a loved one can make all the difference in helping your emerging adults see the benefits and wisdom to self-care. Just a thought.