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Journal Week 10

This week was very different than my usual week because Ashley and I got to go on a

conference in Tallahassee. It was the Southern College Health Association Conference 2022

hosted by Florida State University and Florida A&M University, with representees from over

30 schools. We drove down to Tallahassee on Tuesday, as the conference started with a

welcome luncheon on Wednesday. During the lunch, a speaker started the first session by

talking about resilience and coping skills and how important these were especially over the

past couple of years facing the Covid-19 pandemic. After the lunch, Ashley and I had signed

up for Rachels session in which she talked about “Back to school safety: Planning a

community wellness event”. During the summer Rachel had planned a massive event in the

centennial parking lot on our campus in which kids could explore a variety of vehicles, such

as an ambulance, police car, semi-truck, tractor, and many more. She explained her process

of planning, reaching out, setting up, and organizing the whole event. My second session was

about “Leveling Up Sex Ed: Increasing LGBTQ+ Inclusivity”. Here I learned about changes

in language to speak properly and respectfully to people who do not identify as cis gender

(meaning the anatomical sex they were born with and what schools and staff can do to

integrate those students. In the evening we went to a social mixer, which was basically just

dinner, and afterwards we watched a baseball game at FSU.

Thursday started early with a breakfast at the university. Our first session of the day

was on “Food Insecurity, Eating Disorders, and Equitable Nutrition Care” talking about the

struggles students might have with nutrition and how health promotion offices can address

those. The next session was “Discover Well-Being: From theory to practice” which was

really interesting as the speaker gave us information which was simply not realistic for

smaller schools. He was from East Carolina University which is a really big school with lots

of funding, and he was talking about doing health events giving out iPads, which to a school
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like Georgia College is just not realistic. It was still interesting to listen to him, but also

frustrating because obviously it is easier to promote things with a bigger budget. During

lunch, we had another speaker talking about nursing and brain development, which was

difficult for me to follow because I did not have the necessary knowledge to understand what

she was saying as I’m not a nursing major. In the afternoon, we took some time to explore

campus and the area around it just before dinner started inside the football stadium. This was

probably one of my favorite experiences as we had dinner looking at the football field (it’s

massive) and watched an Irish dance group perform for us for St. Patrick’s Day.

On Friday, we grabbed breakfast and attended our last session of the conference

talking about “The Triage Process-Recognizing and Responding to a Mental Health Crisis”.

This was really interesting as I feel like being a student, I can relate to many risk factors that

can lead to a mental health crisis and I know how - during my internship - we focus a lot on

mental health with our campaigns and tabling. There was no closing event for the conference,

so we left after our last session. Overall, I feel like this conference was a special experience

and an opportunity to learn so much about different health-related topics. I did have the

impression it was meant to be for healthcare professionals rather than students which

sometimes made me feel a little inexperienced, but I tried to still enjoy it as I was grateful for

the opportunity.

Week 10 – Spring Break

Date Time Hours Notes Hours total

03/14 Spring Break
03/15 3 Travel to conference
03/16 11.5 Conference, FL
03/17 11.5 Conference, FL
03/18 7.5 Conference, FL 33.5
Total so far: 351

*My hour log for this week lacks some information as it was difficult to put exact hours

down since we were fully invested in the conference events.