 Good afternoon. Thank you so much for joining us today. I'm Nicole with the Continuing and Distance Education Department at the University of Vermont and we are continuing our three-part series on effective virtual learning student strategies and resources and we're going to end our series today and what I hope is a session on finding ways to connect, to reconnect, to find some balance as you are thinking about approaching the fall course load and balancing with your own life. It's so important to take time to think about yourself and your self-care as you embark on the next start of your educational journey. So we're going to talk a lot about strategies and we're actually going to go through a practice today as well to get you in that mindset. So I'm really looking forward to having this conversation on holistic approaches to learning amidst uncertainty. As I mentioned, my name is Nicola Williay-Fenton. I'm the content marketing manager in our Continuing and Distance Education Department. We're going to meet our panelists in just a minute. We're also going to ask a few questions of students today and we're really going to be looking for those responses in the chat box. So welcome to everybody who's joining us on YouTube. We'll be keeping an eye on your questions and your responses to a few of the questions that the panelists have put together for you and we'll share those questions and responses over in our chat box here. So we really do want this to be engaging and to get the most resources for you today. We're also going to talk about what is the Center for Health and Well-being at UVM and what are the vast resources that are available for you remotely as well. Radical self-care and uncertain times, mindfulness strategies, making connections, ways that you can make connections as a remote hybrid or on campus student this fall, and the importance of making those connections for your success. And we're also going to talk about a digital badge for participation. You're going to learn a lot today and we hope that you've been a part of this three-part series. If you have not gotten any of the messages about the other two webinars, please make sure that you're on our email list. You can email us at learn at UVM.edu and we will be sending out the recording of all three presentations soon. And we'll share about that digital badge for participation. Joining us today is Lindsay Forum. Lindsay is a mindfulness program coordinator for the Center of Health and Well-being. Lindsay, can you share with us a little bit about what you do here at UVM? Yeah, sure. Thanks, Nicole. So I've been at UVM for about four years and just a little bit about my background. So I've been practicing mindfulness actually since I was in college about 20 years ago. And I've been teaching mindfulness for the last 10 years. And something just interesting I was reflecting upon the other day is so I lived in a monastery for a while. And I actually lived in a monastery for about the same amount of time that we've been in this global pandemic. And although it's very different living in a monastery than living through a global pandemic, there actually are some similarities in terms of having little social interaction and actually having to face very deep fears. So I'm bringing that experience with me into the conversation today in terms of mindfulness strategies. Thank you, Lindsay. We really look forward to what you're going to share with us today. Annie Valentine is also in the Center for Health and Well-being. She's the Education Training Manager. Annie, will you share with us a little bit about the work that you do at UVM? There we go. Capacities. Most recently, organizing and managing a lot of our mental health education outreach, specifically mental health first aid, suicide prevention strategies for faculty, staff and students, helping us all recognize when we can see signs and symptoms and be a helping hand. Really trying to reduce stigma and recognizing kind of the tools that we have within ourselves to connect with folks who maybe start going. And I think right now is a time where we can really tap into some of our knowledge and wisdom to be able to connect with one another. So I'm very honored to be here today to share in this learning opportunity. Thank you, Annie. We're so happy to have both of you with us. I wanted to toss back over to Lindsay and Annie to walk us through what I think are some incredibly important points for all of us to surround ourselves in the discussion today. And I know Lindsay, I think you're going to kick us off. Yeah, yeah, thank you. So yeah, Annie and I feel like it's really important to start all of our presentations with an acknowledgment of the land that we're on. And also the, you know, we can't see you right now, but we know that all of you are coming in with different identities. Some that are visible, some that are invisible and just an acknowledgement that these identities that we all hold really influence how we each come into this conversation. So Annie and I are going to read these. We're going to go back and forth and just kind of like just take them in as we're reading them. So the first one is that we in Vermont are situated on stolen land of Abeneke indigenous people who continue to fight for justice. And we just just know that we recognize not everybody's in Vermont. And so you can check out this website to see, you know, wherever you are and what indigenous people lived or still live where you live currently. We in this space may be documented or undocumented. We in this space come from various racial, ethnic, religious and socioeconomic backgrounds as well as different experiences. We in this space may identify as gay, lesbian, bisexual, transgender, queer, questioning or none of the above. And we in this space have identities that are invisible. We in this space understand she will learn something new about ourselves by listening to one another. Thank you so much for sharing that and grounding us in those important points today for all of us to consider in this conversation. As I mentioned in the beginning, interaction is a pretty important part of what we're going to do today. And so if you're having questions or concerns throughout the presentation, please put them in the chat box and we'll share them with our presenters. But we have a question for you first. What are the challenges that you're facing or feeling right now? I know that the probably challenges and feelings have evolved and changed so much over the last six months, but what are you feeling and facing right now as you think about starting this fall? We'd love to see some of the thoughts that you may have and those challenges that you're thinking about. If you could put those in the chat box, we have a team member, Claire, who's going to be bringing those over and sharing them with our presenters and Annie and Lindsay will address those different challenges and feelings a little bit later in the presentation. So the Center for Health and Well-Being is such a crucial part of the University of Vermont. And I'd like Annie to just walk us through the variety of ways that students and remotely, I want to make sure that you keep in mind as a remote student or hybrid student that these services are still here for you. And we hope that you partake in any of the services that you need. So Annie, can you just share with us what is the Center for Health and Well-Being at UVM? Thank you. Yes. So the Center for Health and Well-Being at the University of Vermont is really a comprehensive approach to your health and well-being. It is divided up into various units that are each really dedicated to helping your wellness and being there for you. So we have primary care services, which acts much like your primary care doctor that you may have outside in your community. We provide STI screenings, things like contraception. You can come in and talk to a doc, a nurse, nurse practitioners, a nutritionist. We also have a variety of other services such as a behavioral health specialist knowing that sometimes when we have physical health needs, they're actually really connected to our mental health needs. And so embedded in student health is a behavioral health specialist to help us to do some more integrated care. And then we have counseling and psychiatry services, which we call CAPS, which is our office filled with wonderful therapists who can do individual counseling as well as old group sessions. Again, during COVID and during this time where things have gone remote, that does not mean that we are not offering these services anymore. We are doing all of this virtually. We welcome you to come in to use these services. We have things like Let's Talk, which are embedded in our identity centers so that students who are feeling like they really want to be able to express maybe some of those invisible identities that we just mentioned in our statement that they can connect with counselors in those areas. We also have what is called Living Well, which is our education and outreach unit, which Lindsay and I are both a part of, where we are offering educational opportunities for students to explore maybe some of the behaviors that they would like to challenge a little bit. Maybe it's substance misuse. Maybe it is trying to engage with mindfulness in a new way or exploring it for the first time. We have things like the Catamount Recovery Program. Again, thinking about students who may come in with an identity of being in recovery from a substance use disorder, which can be really hard on a college campus. And so we really delve into some community around that. So this is just a brief overview of what we have at the Center for Health and Well-Being. But really, our services are to support you as you are moving into a new time and a new learning environment that is going to bring about some maybe uncertainty, as the title suggests. And so we want to be here to help you listen to you, validate you, and provide as much support as we can. Thank you so much for sharing that. And let's make sure that we put the web address up. Well, that's going to be incredibly important for people to be able to access that easily. Lindsay, I'm really looking forward to this because we're going to have a moment here where we can actually walk through a gratitude practice. And so maybe sit back a little bit and Lindsay is going to walk us through how we can do this. Lindsay? Yeah. So first, I just want to say that it may not be typical on a webinar for kind of this amount of interaction, but we really hope that you jump in and participate. If you're like, you know, eating your lunch right now or you're, you know, doing whatever if you could just put that down for a moment just to kind of give yourself a little bit of space to engage in this practice. And I'm starting with this gratitude practice because I think in the times that we're in right now, there's just there's a lot of struggle just in so many different ways. And when we're in struggle, it can be really easy to forget our resources to forget the ways that we've been supported. And so I find that this gratitude practice is a way for me when I start to get overwhelmed or when I feel really alone to kind of tap into the care that has been that I've received in my life. And even just getting like a little kind of hit of it can help me to energize and so I'm going to walk you through the practice and yeah, I guess we'll just give it a start. So it's helpful to come into a posture that is stable, kind of like this mountain, which if you don't recognize it as camel's hump, which is a view that that you have from UVM. So just come into a posture that feels stable like a mountain. You can put your feet on the floor if you'd like. And you can close your eyes, you can have your eyes kind of open with a sock gaze, whatever feels good for you. And then just take a couple deeper breaths. You might be, you might have been holding your breath and not even noticing it. Just take a few deeper breaths. And so as you're breathing, you might notice that you in fact have a body. So much of our education, academic education is like very focused on our head. And so it can be helpful to remember that we have a body. So a lot of wisdom and a lot of resource and just connecting into our body. And then beneath your body, so you can sense the earth. You might be in a building that's a couple of stories up, but ultimately beneath you is the earth. I'm just inviting you to take a moment to allow the earth to support you. I'm tuning into that resource of the support of earth beneath you. I'm just letting your body settle into that support just as much as you can. No need to force anything here. Great. So now I invite you to bring to mind some way that you've been cared for or supported in your life. It could be something that happened like, you know, years ago when you were young. It could be something that happened this week. Just some person that has supported you in some way. And so take a moment to think of that and it doesn't have to be like super profound. It can really be like as simple as like, you know, someone's smile that you walking down the street. Or maybe a grandparent hugged you or just some simple experience of being cared for. And just recall what happened in that experience. How were you supported? Maybe you can get a sense in your body a little bit of what that felt like to feel that support, that care. And then imagine looking into this person's eyes and just offering gratitude. Just offering some kind of thank you to this person for their support and their kindness or their care. And then because there's so many ways that we've been supported, sometimes that we don't bring very much attention to it. Just want to bring up one more experience, one more person in your life who has supported you in some way. Again, it can be really simple. It doesn't have to be some grand moment. And once you have that moment, just recall what happened in that experience and imagine seeing the eyes of this person who supported you in some way. Just imagine that person so happy and imagine that person filled with joy and then wish that person well and send gratitude. Sending a thank you to that person. Okay, so to close, we'll just take one more deep breath together. You can roll your shoulders a little bit and move your hands, your feet. Okay, thanks for participating with me. Thank you, Lindsay, so much. It reminds me too when Annie joined us on a webinar a few months ago. We were talking about how to support mental health for students and the simple act of thinking about things that went right that day. It really, I think, was a message that I really resonated with me. So thank you so much for doing that for us, Lindsay. So I'm going to toss this back over to Annie and Lindsay. And I do know that we've had quite a few comments in the comment box about things that students are concerned about. So we'll get to that in just a moment, Annie. Thank you. Yes, so with this slide, really wanting to focus on this quote here around self-care is not about self-indulgence. It's about self-preservation. And I think no time does this ring true more than ever in this moment as we are trying to care for maybe ourselves, our children, partners, living, loving, learning all within the same space. And trying to do that with some grace, but also recognizing that there are many challenges that come along with that. And as we know that prior to COVID, you were all struggling or managing maybe challenges due to feeling overworked, feeling that we wanted to be perfect around things. What the notion of success is, what does it mean to be seen and heard? How to do the best that we can. And now that has shifted in some ways. And because of our lack of connection or the connection that we once thought we that really served us as Lindsay brought up in having this gratitude that we could express maybe by a hug or sitting down with a friend to chat. And so now that's all being kind of snow globe has been shaken up and now it's starting to somewhat fall as we look at starting the fall semester students, faculty, parents. We are all looking at a host of challenges that bring up a lot of emotion for us. And so I like to just at this moment validate that any experience, any feeling that you're having right now is yours. And again, it's validated and that it is okay to feel it to be in it. And then I just want to really encourage reaching out in the ways that you that you can. Right. And we again in the center for health and well being are trying to virtually reach out, letting students know through things like Instagram and social media that we are available to chat with at any time but also knowing that it's going to look a little bit different and feel a little bit different. And as I am seeing some of the messages and the things that have come through in the chat right the words that I'm seeing are adequate and lack of motivation juggling moving pieces. All of those things are are so real and the anxiety that comes along with that. And in some ways we are at this pivotal moment of really looking at what radical acceptance is and can be and reimagining how we live our day to day. So success has been in some ways created for us by a society that really deems who we are by success. And I think if we can take a moment to really truly think about what success means for us and what connection means for us at this time, we maybe we'll give ourselves a little bit of a break in that. But also knowing that that that sense of loss that sense of disappointment is real and how that comes and will meet the learning experience for our students right so there's the emotional pieces and then they're like the truly physical pieces of screen fatigue. Right. And how do I read what a person is saying or doing through a screen. I can imagine that faculty and our our educators are struggling with how to be able to pick up on on those pieces through this virtual learning platform. There are lots of expectations that will be coming from both students and faculty and staff. I also think it is important to recognize that we are entering a fall after after a summer of a lot of racial unrest and we are being called to a movement. The call is there and that lots of our community are suffering trauma and not post trauma. It's it's it's the real thing and it's in real time. And so how are we also holding that as we're trying to learn and engage through a through a screen so not to be doom and gloom but also just to be in the reality that this is this is a time that we're all facing again uncertainty worry anxiety. But as Lindsay mentioned if we can find those moments to have some gratitude. Some moments of joy and connection. Hopefully we can be in this together to to have some collective care and to move through this this time in in history. So a little long winded there but I just really wanted to validate that there are a whole host of experiences that we are all going through right now and not leaning on one another in any way that we can as is the most important. Thank you so much for sharing that and seeing the comments that are now in the chat box from our viewers on YouTube. Thank you for sharing that information as well. What's tough right now as you think about getting started and moving here and the variety of things that everyone's considering. So let's talk a little bit more about mindfulness. We did one small practice of gratitude and thank you Lindsay for walking us through that. But there's so much more that we can be doing. And when Lindsay also has a little bit later in the presentation a few steps that you could be doing throughout your day which I'm really looking forward to Lindsay sharing that information that will be walk us through. So I think it's a big word. Yeah, totally. It's a very big word that's become more and more popular. So yeah, I just want to build off of just a little bit of what Andy was saying about validating, you know, like where everybody is at. And that's actually like built into mindfulness, self validation. So it's a strategy, you know, it's a tool that we can be using. And so I want to talk a little bit more about how we can use that tool but just want to back us up for a moment and just be like okay what is mindfulness because you hear about it a lot and there are actually lots of different definitions out there. I find this definition to be the most simple and kind of straightforward. So the definition is mindfulness is focused relaxed attention. And I think one of the reasons that I like this, this particular definition is that you can see that there's actually these two different skills that are within the definition that we can cultivate that's actually like a big part of a mindfulness is that we're cultivating these two different skills. And the two skills are focus and relaxation, and then they go together. So to have focused relaxed attention. And when we have focused relaxed attention. That's actually when we're in like the optimal space or the optimal state for being open to learning, being open to growth, being kind to ourselves being kind to others. And so, through the practice of mindfulness we are cultivating this focus relaxed attention. And focus relaxed attention is not something kind of like out there and weird and like woohoo, you know, like some kind of like hippie dippy new age thing focus relaxed attention is actually like, it's a, it's the most natural thing that we all have so if you've ever fallen in love. If you've ever played a sport and like gotten into kind of like a flow state, or if you live or somewhere where there's not a ton of light pollution, and you've looked up at the stars and for a moment you just kind of like everything drops away and you're just like there. That's focus relaxed attention and that's like supernatural, not supernatural, it is super it's very natural. And yet, however, it is actually, it's the most natural and it's actually also the most challenging and I know that's contradictory but that's just how things are. So it's the most challenging for many different reasons. One is just kind of human like conditioning, right where we like our, as human beings like we get very tense, we get very distracted. So that's just kind of human conditioning. Like challenges of why it's hard to have focus relaxed attention is that we, you know, like our life experiences. You know, maybe some trauma that we've experienced racism, sexism at you know all forms of oppression and difficult life situations, and specifically including living in a global pandemic. This is like, this is a challenge to focus relaxed attention. And, and so just again to be on that validation train of like, this is hard. However, on the positive side of things, we can cultivate these skills and mindfulness actually comes from Buddhism, it's like a kind of a secular adaptation of Buddhism. And in Buddhism, there's, which there's the four noble truths which the Buddha came up with. And the first truth is that there is suffering. And that truth is actually like a huge that when we recognize that they're suffering, we actually have the motivation to want to be free from that suffering. So from one perspective, we're actually in a pretty good spot that if we're having a hard time, we actually have the motivation to want to be free from some of that struggle. So I want to give us an experience, we had a little experience before but I want to give us another experience that is maybe a kind of mindfulness strategy that you can use particularly when you're sitting at your screen focusing all day. You know, on this to these two dimensional people in front of you. And this practice is called anchor externally. And what I like to do actually just before I go into the practice, what I like to do is I oftentimes I'll set a timer during the day if I'm so I'm working from home and I'm on the screen all day. I'll set a timer maybe every 30 minutes. And when that timer goes off, I'll stop and do this practice and it's really short. Like I do the practice sometimes for 30 seconds sometimes for three minutes. But it's a way for me to kind of get away from the screen. It's a way for me to kind of get out of my head because my head can get really kind of filled up and that can cause a lot of stress. And then it's also a way to build those skills of focus and relaxation. I will also say we'll say this at the end but this practice is on our SoundCloud page. So we'll give you that resource at the end so that you don't have to remember the steps of it that that you can actually just like get on the SoundCloud and play it for yourself. When you're, you know, after this webinar. Okay, so, so you're like sitting on your screen looking right now and your timer goes off and just take a moment to again feel your feet on the ground, your legs in the chair. Notice you have a body and with your eyes, just kind of looking around your space if you have a window you can look outside or there's no window you can just kind of look around your space and just start to notice some details. Maybe some colors, some shapes. Notice the empty space around the objects that are in your room. Some patterns, kind of get out of the space of thinking in your head and just noticing with your eyes. So you might kind of come up with some stories of like, oh, I should clean that mess up or, but we're actually just like not engaging in the stories and just looking with our eyes. You can look at one spot for a while or you can move your eyes around and look at different areas. Again, just getting curious, what you see with your eyes. Maybe noticing more details than you typically notice. I notice myself taking a little bit of a deeper breath as I'm like getting out of my head and just looking in my space. Okay, and then you can either keep your eyes open or you can close your eyes. You can keep your eyes open to sounds. So listening to sounds. So we're anchoring our attention in the external world. There's the sounds of your thoughts in your mind, but then we're bringing our attention to the sounds around you. Again, noticing details. There's sounds that are close to you. Sounds that are far away. Noticing if sounds stay the same or if they change. There might be some silence or just listening to the silence. If you notice yourself getting into your head, getting into stories, just kind of anchor externally, just bring your attention back to sounds. Okay, so we looked around with our eyes, we listened with our ears. Now we're just going to come back into our body. Put your feet on the ground, your legs in the chair. And just kind of check it out. Just notice any other sensations that might be in your body. Maybe some tension in your neck or your shoulders. And we're not trying to push that away or get rid of it or judge ourselves for it. Just simply noticing. That's focused, relaxed attention. Just being aware. Noticing, which can be hard to do. Just want to acknowledge that as a practice. Okay, so you can, if you've been still, you can kind of move your body around a little bit. And if you were doing this as a, like a little three minute break, and you just kind of come right back. And you might notice that when you come back, like, I noticed sometimes when I do that, like my eyes just seem a little clear, or my head's just a little clear. So you have to notice, like, what you feel like when you come back to your learning or to whatever you're doing on your computer. Okay, so Annie mentioned this earlier. And this is a really like super important point right now. Talking about radical acceptance. And so like what is radical acceptance. And I think how that I want to say the most about it is that, although, like I said earlier that recognizing the struggle kind of puts us in a good position to grow. It doesn't necessarily put us in a position to have things go the way we want them to go. That's actually not, we're not in a typical time of our life, we're not in a typical college experience. We are not going to go the way we want them to go. And that's hard. That's hard, but it actually can, we can lighten up some of that load or that pressure when we get in alignment with this truth. And when we are willing to kind of let go of some of those expectations. And then like I said, again, that this is really hard because, you know, Annie mentioned this a little bit but we live in a culture that is has very high expectations. I think white supremacy culture is like really focusing on perfectionism on performance on like, you know, like as a white person like I kind of often expect things to go the way that that I want them to go because that's just kind of how my life has been and that's just not what's happening right now. So, so radical acceptance is, is coming into alignment with the truth that things are not going to go the way that we, you know, sometimes they might but like there are going to be things that happen that are not how we want them to go. So just a question that if you're willing to share. And you can take a moment to think about it. What would be some expectations that you could let go of that would actually ease a little bit of the pressure. You know, so maybe you're used to being a straight A student and maybe you don't get straight A's. You know, maybe you are kind of, you know, used to having a lot of maybe an extrovert and you're used to having like a lot of social engagement. I noticed someone in the chat talked about like not, you know, meeting people in the dorms and, you know, fears around that. Just like what would it be like to what are some things that you would be willing to like, maybe even just lower some of the expectations. So that if that happens and there's a little bit less of a fight, a struggle to make something happen. So take a moment just to share that. And as you're thinking of that is one thing to kind of add in is that there's radical acceptance of ourselves. But this is one I'm really working on. There's also a radical acceptance of others. So I live with my partner and my almost two year old toddler. And, you know, and we're like in a pressure cooker right now, there's a ton going on for both of us in our lives. So I have to do a lot of radically accepting like how my partner is behaving certain days or, you know, or, you know, a co workers in a heart space or, you know, you know, I'm actually starting grad school this fall. So, you know, having patients with my professors who even professors that are going through this right now. You know, so it's like, we kind of looked at professors like hold a lot and, and they, you know, are able to hold a lot, but also they're, you know, no one's immune to this experience. So there's radical acceptance of not just ourself but others. Okay. So, maybe something in the chat. This might be a tough one for people to think about what. And so because I think it's interesting I'm switching back and forth between our audience on YouTube and quiet all of a sudden so this is a tough question to think about some of those things and maybe as Lindsay was mentioning we're far back to some of the challenges or and that you're facing or feeling as you're thinking about starting the fall and can you lessen maybe some of those expectations or see them a little bit differently. So maybe as people watching are still thinking about that a little bit more, maybe we can come back to that Lindsay, as I'm not seeing anybody share their thoughts. Yeah, and that's not not surprising I mean, you know, these expectations we hold so like, you know, we have such like a hold on them and so I just think just encourage you maybe like after this presentation or, you know, tomorrow morning or something like journal for a few minutes of like, just intentionally thinking about like what am I what expectations of what I'd be willing to let go of. Even just a little bit. So no need to figure that out right now. It's a big question. So the last thing I want to talk about mindfulness. I have gave you this is a little bit of like a daily mindfulness schedule. Obviously you don't have to do all of this might want to start start with one and like add them and see what works for you. But it can be helpful like, especially when we're sitting on our computer all day long to have little like little bits of practice that can kind of break up the day and help us to stay centered stay grounded, stay present. So and, and if you were to do all of these at the out of bed amount without a bedtime but only be eight minutes. So you can see the first practice is a wake up to gratitude. It's about three or four minutes long on the samplug do that in bed. So if you have time while you're at the computer learning studying around class, take a five minute stretch break. There's a practice on samplug called gentle stretch. And then some other time like, you know, set your timer, which is hard because sometimes we get in this like, you know, I get in this kind of like, go mode, go mode, we want to get things done that kind of like perfectionism. And then, you know, step back and do this three minute anchor externally practice. And then maybe at night, when, you know, still there's like, you've built up some stress, built up some, some disappointment that there's a practice on the sun clouds called spread kindness, which can just be a really helpful way to go to bed, going to bed with focusing on some care towards yourself and care towards other people. I'll just mention the bottom that there are within the sound cloud there's compassion and resilience practices or anytime you're feeling sad, scared, overwhelmed, lonely, angry, whatever. These are practices that can can be kind of just like a support to like tap into. I shared a lot with you, but just want to say that like throughout the whole semester I know Annie mentioned that we have online program so there's going to be a lot of opportunities to engage in mindfulness. So kind of keep an eye out for that on the board. And I do see we're having folks have had a chance to ponder that question so let's come back to that in a few minutes Lindsay. Just want to be mindful of the time and give everyone a chance to ask a few questions to build upon. You've been talking about is making connections and a lot of the concerns that students have put into the chat box on YouTube, making friends, finding my community. And while there are a lot of resources at UVM and we'll make sure to list all of the resources available for you to explore different communities here at the University of Vermont. One of the things that we want to share is we're going to share a short video from student life. The associate director Jerome has created a great video for us today in which he's explaining about the options for you to get involved. And we're going to talk a little bit more about why that's so important. Hello, my name is Jerome Budomo and I'm the associate director for student life. We empathize that staying engaged in your learning amidst a time of uncertainty can be difficult. As we engage in a conversation about holistic approaches to learning, even within these difficult times, we want to emphasize that you belong. As discussed in the last two webinars, studying remotely can make you feel disconnected at UVM and feel like you're not part of the catamount community. However, I want you to say out loud, I am UVM. Now say it again. I had you say that I am UVM because I wanted you to hear it, feel it and believe it for yourself. I want you to consistently remind yourself that this fact because we want you to have that sense of belonging. We hope that sense of belonging will center and motivate your learning amidst these uncertain times. That is why we have been working hard to create opportunities for you to connect and engage. As mentioned in our previous two webinars, we invite undergraduate students to participate in UVM's welcome and join one of our 200 plus recognized student organizations. So check out UVM clubs at clubs.uvm.edu as well as UVM board at UVM board.com. We hope that these involvement opportunities build your affinity to UVM so that you feel that you belong to our catamount community. So that as you continue to navigate these uncertain times, your sense of belonging will assist with your learning so that you can continue to persist. I think if you listen to some of Jerome's suggestions, there's so many things that you can find your community here at UVM. And the clubs and the student organizations are working on hybrid models this year. So remote students, no excuse other than finding the time of course. But there really is a lot of opportunities for everyone to get involved and to really feel comfortable with saying I am UVM. So I really appreciate Jerome saying that. I wanted to come back to Annie for a moment. And Annie, I'll turn on your mic for you. Let's talk about, we don't need to go through all the bullets here on the slide, but why is this so important for students? And I, and of course I'm using the word success with awareness that that means something different to everybody. But why is the involvement and finding community so important for students? Annie, we can't hear you for some reason. I don't think your microphones turned back on. So let's just, can you hear me now? Yeah, there you are. Okay, go for it. So I think the experience is probably a varied for a first year student who's making that, that big jump into college, the experience that they've kind of created in their mind and wanting to find those connections. Versus maybe a junior or senior who has some connections is wanting to build on that because their college career is kind of coming to that, that an end, if you will, for undergrads. But again, that sense of belonging that Jerome mentioned when you jump into a college community, such as UVM, there is a sense of wanting to belong to find your tribe, to be in a place where their shared experiences around learning around experiencing a new sense of freedom and agency around what you get to choose having left home. And so I do think that that connection, it is hard to think about how to do it virtually. And as Jerome mentioned, there are lots of opportunities that we are trying to create an encopious amounts of meetings with all of the student affairs professionals who have been doing this for a long time. And we are also feeling a sense of loss in that we can't offer what we, what we once have been able to, whether it's a moving day and greeting parents and students and saying you're, you know, here's a face, you need me stop by my office and reach, reach out. And so there is a, there is a lot of importance in it. And just because we can't do it in person, does it mean that we're still not here and available? I just want to reiterate that, that we are, we'll be doing our best to update the UVM board site and some of our other Instagrams, other social media opportunities to reach students. Great. Thank you for circling back around on the importance of that as well. And as Jerome and Annie mentioned, UVM board is a really amazing resource for students to find different opportunities and ways to get involved. So we have one more video that we're going to play. One of the things that's so important that our faculty and staff at UVM have been working on since we went remote last spring is making sure that resources for students are available remotely as well. And the library is one of the most amazing opportunities and locations for you to access resources and find support from the tutoring center to the writing center to ask a librarian just finding people at the library that can help you on this journey. So we have a short video from Daisy, who is one of the librarians at the How Library, and she really wanted to communicate two points that she wants all students to make sure that you know. Being a remote student, this is for you. Welcome to the UVM Libraries. Navigating a world of research information can be challenging, and our knowledgeable and friendly librarians are here to help you find answers to all of your research questions. Here are two quick tips about using our libraries. Tip number one, ask a librarian. Need help? We can help you to develop a research topic, find sources, assess the accuracy of information, and more. It's easy to ask us a question using our Ask a Librarian services via chat, email, and more. Go to the library website at library.uvm.edu and click on the question mark icon at the top. Tip number two, use research guides. Want to get started on some research on your own but don't know where to begin? Use one of our many research guides to help you identify the best starting points on any topic. You can access research guides by clicking on the green button marked research guides below the main search box on our website. The guides are organized by broad subjects, and they're often guides for individual groups or classes. You can learn more about the library, its services and collections, by visiting our website at library.uvm.edu. And don't forget, Ask a Librarian. Hopefully that gives you a little bit more confidence as to how you can reach out and access the library. And I can't recommend enough to please reach out and an individual consultation, especially if you're a first year student coming into UVM and you've chosen remote, the staff at the library are absolutely here to help you. Annie, I'm hoping that we have about seven minutes left. And so I'm hoping that maybe we could briefly go through some of these slides. We've got about four slides that list a variety of resources and support for students at UVM. So maybe, Annie, if you just want to go through those quickly, and then we can come back with Lindsay and we can wrap up with a few of the questions and comments. Sounds great. Yeah, and I won't name them all. I'll make the assumption that maybe we'll be able to share them in some other formats here, but we'll quickly talk about some of the supports that are here. So within each college, we have student services that are really there to help you navigate classroom or class selection. Maybe you're trying to navigate the courses to rigorous for you, maybe not rigorous enough. So I would encourage you to check out those resources. Blackboard, which is really the tool that many that faculty use for for your classrooms right near how you are putting up your assignments. Navigate another way to schedule advising appointments that could be with this college of student services. One point I just want to kind of reiterate is that, you know, we're talking about accessing resources and for some folks, it can be really difficult, right? Like I don't know who to ask. I don't know how to ask. Do I call? Do I email? And so really wanted to encourage that it takes a little bit of courage in this time to just kind of reach out wherever you can because I think we often say students reach out if you need us. But sometimes they're like, I'm not quite sure how to do that. So wanting to validate that that is an experience that that students may have. And we really want to encourage the courage to do that. Office of Community Engaged Learning, Office of Fellowships and Opportunities, Office of International Education, all of these areas again are here to support your learning and to help you get some access to resources. And then Student Accessibility Services, Student Athlete Academic Support, TRIO. The Student Accessibility Services and TRIO Support Services are all part of the Center for Academic Success. So within that office there are tutoring services, getting you connected to the Writing Center, getting you connected to time management skills, all of the things that were very valid and appropriate during pre-COVID times that are, again, still needed and probably more than ever during this time. So again, please reach out and whatever means that you can. If it's email, if it's calling, and if it doesn't seem like it's the right office, we are all here to help you get to the appropriate place to get those services that you need to support you to really define your experience at UVM. And you did also mention the Tutoring Center and the Writing Center, which are all in the library as well. So thank you so much for zipping through those resources. And as I mentioned in the beginning, this is the third of three webinar series that we've been doing. And the first one we focused on time management strategies. And the second one, last night we focused on creating a learning mindset and a growth mindset in a remote setting. And throughout the presentations, the thing that really resonated and hopefully has for students is how important it is to reach out to your professors. They absolutely want to hear from you and want to make that connection with you. So if you are a remote student this fall, please reach out to your professors and make that connection. There's opportunities to reach out also in individual classes and try to find study partners and try to find a study group remotely too. So this is something that you absolutely can do. And all of the faculty that we've heard from on these presentations have encouraged that. So I wanted to come back briefly to Lindsay. You've had a couple of different comments in here as we were thinking about what expectations possibly could we lower or could we let go all together. And I know you probably don't have time to go through all of them. But do you want to just maybe ground us back in that question and how we can think about that going forward. Sure. Yeah. I just want to thank the people who share is really, really touching to read your, read in the chat what you shared. And I just, I want to emphasize that the grounding of like, of radical self care or radical acceptance is really like radical love. And that, you know, maybe I'm kind of like being kind of like a downer of being like, you know, let go of these things you may not be able to exceed and succeed in certain ways. But actually what I'm trying to convey is that during this time, like, we all are needing a lot of love and a lot of acceptance and a lot of like, just compassion for what we're all going through. And so the radical acceptance is not about like letting go of like all of our expectations or all of our responsibilities. Like someone wrote in the chat about, you know, you can't, you can't let go the expectation of like caring for your kids like that's, that's not on the table, you know, and that and so we have compassion for that that like, you know, maybe we're not going to do as well as we might lose our temper or maybe we'll, you know, just not live up to our standards. But when that happens like how do we then come back to this place of care this place of understanding this place of compassion towards ourselves. You know, that might seem kind of like, it might seem kind of undoable or far away, but I just want to convey that it is, it's like, it's, it can be really helpful if we practice letting ourselves kind of mess up sometimes letting ourselves not be perfect. You know, we're not like I said, we're not letting go of like everything just kind of recognizing that the situation is not the same. And so our expectations need to be different. And, and just, yeah, again, a lot of care for like, you know, kind of let go of like the feeling the guilt of not being able to visit my grandma. I'm actually also from Chicago and like, feel sadness about not being able to visit my mom. You know, I see a lot about like, you know, letting go of perfectionism, letting go of maybe like the grades that we hope to have. But in the long run, and I just really want to emphasize this point that in the long run, this is, this is a really challenging time right now. And if we could build this skill during this time, it's going to serve us for the rest of our lives, that if we can be easier on ourselves, we can, you know, it's not like we're not going to work hard and try our best. But if we can be more compassionate with ourselves when things don't go the way we want, that's going to carry us so far, even after this global pandemic is over. Thank you so much for sharing that information and thank you everybody for sharing what you're sharing and what you're struggling with as well. I know we've done a little bit of a different webinar today, and I hope that everyone has enjoyed this experience this afternoon. And we hope, and I have no doubt that you've learned something today, and you can carry that learning with you as you start classes here in another week and a half, or maybe less at this point. We also have a digital badge for participation that we would love to offer anyone who would like that, and we'll put up, excuse me, information in the follow-up emails with the recording as well as to how you can access that digital badge. As closing, I just want to again thank our panelists. Thank you, Lindsay. Thank you, Annie, for taking time. Thank you for the work that you do at UVM and for our students. It's so important, and I really do want to encourage our students and faculty, everybody that's watching today and has participated in one or two or all three of our sessions that we really are here for you. And the University of Vermont wants to see that you are really enjoying your time, that you're succeeding, and that you are feeling that you are part of UVM. We will be sending out the recordings of each of these sessions soon, probably next week. And if you have additional questions, please do follow up with us at learn at UVM.edu. Again, thank you, Lindsay. Thank you, Annie, and we wish everyone a wonderful afternoon.