Summer Activities to Encourage Wellbeing
I am out of the office today, so this is a pre-post.
After your student catches up on some much needed rest and relaxation, encourage them to be mindful of their wellbeing this summer. Our Thrive initiative looks at eight dimensions of wellbeing, so here are some ideas to help your student thrive in all areas.
Encourage your student to give these suggestions a try – or try these practices and improve your wellbeing along the way!
Emotional Wellbeing: Connect with your inner child and re-learn how to play! Play is an important and easy way to de-stress and get in some sunshine and physical activity. Whether that’s getting a group of friends together to play a good old-fashioned game of tag or buying a coloring book for adults, it’s important to take some time to have fun, in whatever form delights you.
Environmental Wellbeing: Plant a garden. The weather is getting warmer and the plants are in full bloom! Gardening has both environmental and mental health benefits. There are a variety of ways to get your hands dirty: you can start your own garden or you can get involved by volunteering in a local community garden! Once back at Wake, your Deacs can continue nurturing the environment via our own Campus Gardens.
Financial Wellbeing: Wake has invested in iGrad, which is a tool to provide our students with free financial planning and financial wellbeing tools. iGrad offers a wide range of tools, including courses, articles, videos, webinars, to help people make informed financial decisions. All Wake Forest students have access to the site using your WFU username and password. Students can learn about iGrad’s free online financial resources and complete their personalized profile to get started with custom recommendations.
Intellectual Wellbeing: during the academic year, it can be hard for students to read for fun (because they have so much reading for class). But in the summer, they can pick up a book for fun, take free online courses, or even do a crossword puzzle or the daily Wordle, Quordle, etc. Here are some other ideas.
Occupational Wellbeing: For students doing a summer internship or a job shadow, those can be great ways to better understand a potential profession in which they might be interested. Even if their summer work experience teaches them they don’t want to pursue that as a career, that’s still valuable data! (Much better to find out now you don’t want to be an X than after you’ve taken the job post-graduation!) The OPCD has advice on how your student can make the most of their internship and how to reflect on the experience after the internship has concluded.
Physical Wellbeing: Make sure to stay hydrated in the summer heat. It’s easy to lose track of your daily water intake, but you should be drinking enough water for your lifestyle. Health.com has a fun list of the best summer foods by state. See how your fridge stacks up!
Social Wellbeing: Get involved in your community. HelpGuide provides this resource on the effects of volunteering in the community. If your student doesn’t know where to start looking, there are resources like VolunteerMatch where they can find local companies and places to volunteer with over the summer. If your Deac finds they enjoy volunteering, they can connect with our Office of Civic and Community Engagement once they return to campus to find opportunities during the academic year.
Spiritual Wellbeing: Carve out some time for daily meditation! There are numerous benefits of daily meditation, including reducing stress and improving sleep. Our Mindful Wake website explores some of the benefits of mindfulness and our University Counseling Center offers mindfulness audio tracks and other resources.
— by Betsy Chapman, Ph.D. (’92, MA ’94)