Section LC10

I had been to the Advance Interviewing Skills prior to this event, but the speaker delivered the information much better than the one at the Advance workshop. I did really enjoy coming to this event. I met alot of people who intern in the same building as me and some future interns that were interviewing for the opportunity as well. The skills they taught us in this was very similar to the impression management workshop that was held a few months ago. Rhona, the woman that was running the workshop, was really nice, had a sense of humor. It made the workshop all that more enjoyable. Afterwards, I was given the chance to sent down with her to do a quick resume review without even making an appointment at the STARR center. The time spent at this event was definitely worth it.

One might think that these mandated workshops and blogs are just another bullet point on our long list of things to do, but I’m grateful for them. Each one introduces something new that is invaluable to our learning and professional lives, and this one in particular aimed to reduce stress, thus making us more productive in all areas. We began with common ways that we get stressed, and talked about preventing ourselves from being in stressful situations in the first place. As we all know, stress is inevitable, so it was important that we had active ways to combat it. One way was to be more mindful and aware of our surroundings. We had a sensory activity in which we examined every aspect of a raisin including how it looks, feels, smells, and tastes. We took a lot of time for this to really get to know the raisin. After we were through, we were calmer from having spent so much of our focus on becoming mindful of all of the sensations, and also from focusing on one task. We had done the same thing in my psychology class, so this was nothing new, but there was then a muscle relaxation exercise that I found to be very effective. It involved tensing your muscles, one group at a time working from head to toe, and then releasing them. Building up tension by flexing or stretching brought our stress level higher, but upon releasing and relaxing we felt relieved. It’s something I’ll definitely keep in mind as I make my way through college, where stress is just going to accumulate exponentially.