UMass Boston

Workshops Offered:

Addressing Procrastination: Do you find yourself procrastinating when it comes to important deadlines and assignments, what about things at home like dishes and laundry? While most workshops talk about structuring time, this unique perspective on procrastination will discuss how the cycle of procrastination is perpetuated by anxiety. Participants at this workshop will learn why we all procrastinate, how procrastination is linked to anxiety, and what steps we can take to decrease procrastination at home, school, and in the workplace.

Stress Management/Self-Care:​ The combination of family, school, work, and other responsibilities can lead to high levels of stress, and low levels of self-care. In this workshop, we cover how stress can get in the way, and address strategies for coping with stress and living a more balanced life. 

Time Management: Do you have difficulty managing your time effectively? In this workshop, we discuss how to better manage your time by setting goals, staying organized, and clarifying your values.

Test Anxiety: Tests can cause stress and anxiety, leading to unhelpful responses that interfere with test performance and cause distress. This workshop will cover multiple strategies for managing test anxiety before, during, and after testing. 

Performance Anxiety: Ever feel nervous raising your hand in class, introducing yourself, or giving a presentation? All of these are important skills in the classroom, workplace, and many other settings, but often come with a lot of anxiety. This workshop will discuss where anxiety comes from, along with skills we can use to reduce it.

SOS - Asking for Help:  Asking for help isn't easy. Navigating personal, cultural, and social factors can make requesting assistance for a variety of issues difficult. Through this workshop, we will examine our beliefs, assumptions, and attitudes toward the process of asking for help, in addition to practicing skills for requesting assistance. This workshop will also provide an overview of UMB Resources that are available for anyone seeking help.

Sleep Health: Getting a good night’s sleep is important for physical health, mental health, and well-being. However, many of us struggle to get enough sleep, or to maintain healthy sleep patterns. In this interactive workshop, you will learn how to improve your sleep, and avoid poor sleep habits. 

Mindfulness: Want to learn strategies to manage stress while in school and improve your focus on what matters to you? This interactive mindfulness-based stress management workshop will provide you with practical and accessible stress management and mindfulness skills, and help you to clarify what is most important to you in your life. We hope this workshop will be helpful for you to renew your focus, motivation, and energy for your academic, personal, and professional work, and to reduce some stress in your life!

Self-Compassion: Are you frequently down and harsh on yourself? Although many of us have been told that being self-critical is essential to our success, this harsh attitude can weigh us down, destroy our motivation, and create and aggravate mental health concerns. Instead, we propose adopting an attitude of self-compassion that can help us survive and thrive during life's hardest moments and hiccups. Based on the teachings and research by Kristen Neff, this workshop will discuss the importance of self-compassion and provide attendees with ways of incorporating this mindset throughout their day. 

Living a Meaningful Life: Are you feeling overwhelmed and like school is taking over your whole life? This interactive workshop will help you to clarify what is most important to you in your life (your values). After talking about values, we will discuss ways that we might used valued action to reduce stress and increase effectiveness in all life domains (school, family, hobbies, etc). 

Communicating Effectively: Having dialogues with supervisors and/or colleagues can be hard, especially when asking for something. This workshop will provide strategies to learn how to communicate more effectively, and step-by-step instructions for asserting yourself in relationships.

Changing Your Habits: We all have some behaviors or habits that we would like to change. We have all felt like we "should" do something, but haven't been able to. This workshop will help you understand what some obstacles to change are, how to build motivation, and what skills you can use to take the first steps towards change.

Career Direction and Values: Not sure how to choose a major or career path? Being aware of our interests and what we value in life can help us make intentional choices as we explore career paths. In this workshop, we discuss the process of considering skills, personal characteristics, interests, practical needs, and values to potential career paths. 

Reconsidering our Relationship to Technology: Smart devices have infiltrated every part of our lives, from phones and laptops, to smart watches. Although these devices can be handy tools for getting things done and communicating with others, our relationship with these tools can move from useful to problematic. This workshop will help us expand our awareness of the role of smart devices in our lives and reconsider our relationship to these gadgets.

Exploring Social Identities: Social identity is the perception of self and others based on the social groups one belongs to. Our various identities interact with each other and influence us (e.g., our thinking, emotions, behaviors, values, communication) and others. This workshop is a brief introduction to self-awareness around the social identities that we hold, diversity, how the combinations of identities affect our experiences, and how societal structures may privilege or marginalize some of our identities.