Week 4 - Meeting Day

Fridays are normally fairly busy for me—8:30 am lecture, volunteering at the Environment Student Society’s coffee shop in the early afternoon, and later a Knowledge Integration seminar. Not extraordinarily busy, but hardly a day off.

How fortunate, then, was I that all three of my major Friday commitments were cancelled for the Thanksgiving long weekend? It was certainly cause for joy, especially since I’ve been so preoccupied with studying and coursework lately. (Plus, any reason not to have to wake up for a class first thing in the morning should be celebrated.)

However, just because one is freed of one’s regular commitments does not mean that all else can fall by the wayside. Especially when “all else” includes an honours thesis.

Today I ended up booking myself two meetings: one with the Student Success Office (SSO), and the other with Counselling Services (CS). My goal for each of these meetings is to learn more about how each of these services manages their communication with students. More specifically, I would like to know how they let students know about the mental health-related services they provide—not just to students with mental illnesses, but to the UW student population as a whole—and if/how they provide any sort of “general mental wellbeing advice”, which includes tips on managing stress and healthy living.

I did stop by CS (at Needles Hall) to ask the receptionist for more information, and she mentioned that they do not have anyone specifically “in charge” of communication to students. I don’t, truthfully, find this very surprising. Just yesterday I meandered to the upper level of the Health Services (HS) building and I found a whole area labelled “Mental Health”—turns out there’s an entire division of CS at HS. Who would have known? I also did not know, until digging through the HS and CS websites, that there was a “MATES Peer Mentors” program for any students who are struggling with their wellbeing.

Overall, I think I am well on my way to finding out, from a top-down level, how communication about mental health information is done at UW. What is still missing is an advisor who can help me tie it in with the bottom-up perspective of how students feel about the information that is communicated to them. I meet with a potential advisor next Tuesday, though (with the exception of one rejection email) I still have not heard from any of the other faculty I have contacted. Hopefully things work out with my meeting next week, otherwise I will be in a pretty tight bind as I have to submit a detailed proposal in just over a week’s time.

Week 3 - Preliminary Research a.k.a. Digging through UW Websites

As I was feeling stuck regarding whom to contact to potentially supervise my thesis, I decided to get some advice from my course instructor, Katie, at the beginning of this week. Since I want to look at how mental wellness information is currently being communicated by the university and how it can be improved, Katie recommended that I first get in touch with Counselling Services, or perhaps the Student Success Office, and find out who is involved in that particular job. That way, they can tell me what is being done and whether they’re looking for any improvements, and I can propose to them how I may be able to help. Then, I can contact a potential supervisor once I’ve narrowed down my aims for the project.

She also suggested that I take a closer look at what these services’ websites have to offer; this would give me a better idea of the areas that may need improvement. One thing that I found during this investigation was that the Counselling Services website can inform students of a lot of resources available to them; however, there are so many different links to look through and students may not be able to quickly find what they need. More importantly, students may not know what they need in the first place. The website has two main “categories” of resources – the services provided by Counselling Services itself (“Our Services”) and resources of other services (“Resources”). Under “Resources” is a list of links to “Campus Resources”, “Community Resources”, “Emergency Contacts”, “Student Groups and Other Resources”, and “President’s Office”. “Student Groups and Other Resources” links to self-help information, including help for individuals with mental health disorders as well as other students. What concerns me is how a student to (a) know to go to the Counselling Services website for information about self-help when they don’t believe they are experiencing serious mental health challenges, (b) find this information, and (c) decide that the advice is worthy of exploring.

I sent an email to Counselling Services on Wednesday, and I hope to hear from them soon. If not, I may have to go directly to them, as time is running out before I have to submit advisor information to Katie. A week from today, October 9, is the due date. I’ll have to consider also contacting the SSO, though I do think their website is generally much better organized than CS’s is. What I would likely target then is students’ attitudes towards the information the SSO shares and whether they are incorporating it. Do students use the tips they provide, or do they end up just going with the flow? Lots of possible research questions to consider…

Week 2 - Introduction

Hello and welcome to my blog, Sarah's KI Thesis Journal. While it's not a clever title, I feel it's the best way to encapsulate what I'll be writing about this term. I'm in my fourth year of Honours Knowledge Integration at UW, and the final requirement of this program is a yearlong Senior Thesis Project. The research project can be based in any discipline, or (oftentimes) a combination of more than one. While that may sound daunting, having such an open-ended project -- and it certainly does feel that way, as I describe below -- it allows us, as students in KI with various areas of interest, to each pursue a topic that we are truly passionate about. This blog for ENGL 108D, therefore, will document my process through my research project. It will also provide me with another venue to think through my thoughts related to this thesis and perhaps come up with new ideas as a result. It's really a win-win!

At this point in the game, the second week of classes is wrapping up, and while I do have a general idea of what kind of issue I'd like to investigate, I'm struggling with narrowing down the sort of approach I'd take. My current "topic" (term here used loosely) is tackling the communication of mental health advice to the general undergraduate student population, in order to promote self-help and mental well-being. I've discovered that I am passionate about issues surrounding mental health and the role of the university in preventing its students from struggling. Where I'm stuck, currently, is how I will more specifically look at this issue and solve it. I have considered researching from a health communication view, a social psychological view (specifically attitudes and behaviour), and a design thinking view (a method of complex problem-solving I learned in my first year of KI). I've considered doing a combination of all three. The biggest consequence of being uncertain of my disciplinary approach, however, is that I have very little idea whom to contact to potentially become a supervisor. Thus, my aim for this coming week is to tighten up my approach and send out some more emails to faculty members.