Hello Wellbeing Week! Fancy seeing you here! What do you have in store for me this time?
Wellbeing Week is happening from 7–11 September, and there is a lot going on across Flinders – particularly at Bedford Park.
The full Wellbeing Week program includes activities spanning physical activity, mindfulness, creativity, connection, food, study skills and general merriment.
A few highlights include:
- Monday: Sex Edu in the Student Hub, with live music, crafts, cookies and sexual health information. 🎵🎨🍪
- Tuesday: Good Vibes in the Hub, featuring the Gratitude Wall, expressive art, meditation with a DJ, African drumming and more. There are also Flinders Mates, an online mindfulness session and an online Fail Fast. Fail Forward. workshop. 💛🎨🥁
- Wednesday: Pickleball, meditation, free soup, a conversation group, a workshop on managing digital distractions and an in-person Fail Fast. Fail Forward. session. City Campus is also hosting I Wish I Knew That: Life Beyond University for international students. 🏓🧘🍲
- Thursday: Bend & Brew – mat Pilates followed by a warm drink – plus R U OK? Day activities and the Flinders Community Market at Oasis. 🧘☕💬
- Friday: A Wim Hof workshop at the gym, followed by a community morning tea, forest walk and Crafternoon at Oasis. 🧊☕🌲🎨
Some activities require registration, so check the program before wandering in expectantly.
As someone who enjoys hiding in his office, it is probably a little cheeky of me to recommend this, but I strongly encourage you to get onto campus for one or more of the events if you can. Bedford Park is going to be particularly busy throughout the week, and these themed weeks are often when campus feels most alive.
But attending an event isn’t the only way to mark the occasion.
Wellbeing Week is also a good prompt to do something (anything actually) with your wellbeing in mind. You might:
- Explore BetterU and dig through some of our past articles.
- Visit the new Good Vibes Experiment website, explore its 20 wellbeing tactics and perhaps order a free Activity Book.
- Finally take up that gym membership you have been contemplating.
- Grab one of our useful resources, such as my sprawling Self-Care Mega Guide.
- Reach out to someone, take a proper break, go for a walk, try something creative or investigate one of the support services available to you.
The point is not to completely reinvent yourself over five days. It is simply to use the week as a reminder to make one or two choices with your wellbeing in mind.
Interestingly (at least for me), I tend to be a little quieter during Wellbeing Week.
My colleagues at Oasis do an amazing job running activities on campus, while the Wellbeing Ambassadors fly the BetterU flag and encourage students to get involved. Because I talk about wellbeing on this site throughout the rest of the year, I almost use Wellbeing Week as a short break.
I guess I am investing in my own wellbeing.
Yay me!
I also want to give a shout-out to the communications and orientation teams. The websites created for these themed weeks are now super clean, precise and genuinely useful. As someone who spends quite a lot of time thinking about how wellbeing information is presented, I appreciate good information design when I see it.
In case you didn’t know, Wellbeing Week is one of three themed weeks – alongside Connect Week and Success Week – that extend orientation activities across the semester. You can learn more about the themed weeks and the thinking behind them here.
And if the week leaves you feeling particularly inspired, perhaps you could write a short article for BetterU. Maybe you have learned something useful about looking after your wellbeing that other students might appreciate. Perhaps you are studying a health-related degree and have encountered a cool idea that deserves a wider audience. You don’t need to arrive with a perfectly polished article, we are happy to help you develop it.
Anyway, I hope you have a great Wellbeing Week.
Actually, I hope you have great weeks in general.
You may find me wandering around campus during the week pretending to be a student so I can acquire free food. Unfortunately, most of the wellbeing-related people now know who I am, so this is becoming increasingly difficult.
