If you are reading this, you might have been recommended to visit BetterU and subscribe. Or you might have landed here, having clicked through from the newsletter (in which case you are already subscribed). Either way, very nice to see you!
Hello!
If this is the first time you’ve visited BetterU, then welcome!
Back in 2017, I kicked off something called the Student Health and Wellbeing Blog. The goal was simple: to write about how we look after our wellbeing.
From 2017 to 2025, I wrote almost 1500 articles (I assume my medal is in the post?). They ranged from short posts about upcoming events or trainings to longer posts about specific wellbeing practices.
In 2025, the blog got transformed into Flinders’ student wellbeing brand BetterU. The goals are the same, but just a little bigger and flashier.
BetterU is intended to be one of the primary news outlets for wellbeing services and programs here at Flinders. So, we include content about programs and services provided by Student Life (which includes Health, Counselling and Disability Services, Oasis, International Student Services (ISS), Student Engagement and Success Unit and more) as well as our partners like Student Learning Support Services (SLSS) and Careers.
We do this on the basis that we know many students want or need to work on aspects of their physical, mental, social and spiritual health whilst they are doing their degree.
We support them in that by providing direct instruction on how to do that (i.e. talk about wellbeing practices) as well as directing them to the resources, programs and services that can help.
The BetterU website is where we do that!
But we are also mindful that you are super busy. You don’t have the time to be coming back and visiting this blog regularly. You’ve got places to go, people to see, assignments to do the night before, things to do, shows to binge.
So, to make your life easier, there is the capacity to subscribe to BetterU. Subscribing means you get sent an email, to your flinders address, once per week (Tuesday mornings at the moment), that lists all the content that has been added in the last week.
You can take a quick look (takes about 15 seconds), see if there are any articles or news items that are relevant to your specific wellbeing goals, and click through if there are or hit that sweet sweet delete button if there are not.
Simply click the stupidly sized QR code below or click this link. It will take you to the subscription form. Enter your first name, flinders email, college, and any wellbeing topics you are interested in and hit submit – done!!
What happens then??
The first Tuesday after you subscribe you’ll get your first newsletter. It will be titled “Flinders Student Wellbeing News – Better U”, coming from “Flinders Health, Counselling and Disability Services’. It will look something like this:
The email will be a list of articles that have been added to BetterU in the previous week. If there is something you like the look of, click through. If not, wait until next week for the next newsletter and I’m sure there will be something of interest 😊
If you think a fellow student or staff member might be interested in regular news and articles from BetterU, direct them towards this post.
Tell them they’d be joining a community of over 2800 students and staff that have signed up since the blog started!
Is an email newsletter really the best idea? What about social media? Why are you stuck in the early 2000’s?
I realise that an email newsletter is somewhat ancient in the scheme of communication channels 📩
And I promise that we are thinking about how to utilise other channels that are more popular to students (feel free to sound off in the comments about what channels you’d most like to see us)
But it remains the case that email is the dominant communication channel for work more generally, and we know that everyone has it (whether or not they read it is another thing altogether).
So for the time being it remains the simplest and most efficient methods we have to keep you updated. It has been in operation since 2018 and we have every intention of keeping it going (even if we explore other channels as well).
If email really isn’t your thing, it is worth knowing about a couple of Insta accounts that are worth following and whilst they won’t include all BetterU content, they will include wellbeing content.
Oasis Instagram – Oasis is the Student Wellbeing Centre and responsible for a lot of on-campus community and wellbeing related activity.
Hey Flinders – Hints & Tips | Important Reminders | Uni News | Campus life | Support Services | Your official current student account of @flindersuniversity.
Parting words
Those of us in Student Life know that you are at university to get a degree/qualification/skill boost and take the next step in your life.
We also know that during the time you are doing that, wellbeing-related stuff can come to the surface.
Through BetterU our goal is to let you know about the different tools, techniques, events, services and news that can help you address these wellbeing challenges (and interestingly at the same time probably improve your academic performance).
Basically, we don’t want you to miss out on something that would help you during your time here at Flinders, because you didn’t know about it.
So I guess that is a very long way of saying ‘like and subscribe’ except we don’t have a ‘like’ button, so maybe just subscribe 🙂