Mercy held their first De-Stress December event on Dec. 4, which was held to help professors and students with the extremely stressful month of December when a lot of tough final exams and last-second work is due.

Different professors and members of the Mercy staff took turns throughout the event, each speaking their piece on what was needed to take away stress, and be able to achieve a successful end of the semester. The event was held on Zoom, so it was free for anyone within the Mercy community to come, and help them be able to cope with the stress that was going on.

The meeting started with open meditation, as everyone was encouraged to put their palms up and mediate, and there was a 5-minute briefing of silence for everyone. Meditation was a key part of it, as most of the professors implied, they were having a stressful time and really needed to decompress and get meditated.

One of the hosts, Associate Prof.  of Special Education, Ilene Rothschild, asked women’s basketball coach Alena Kush what did she love about being a teacher. Kush implied she “loves building interest and investing in people” and that teaching was “healing.”

Another panelist, Daylyn Johnson, said she had “loved the thrill of teaching and its so fun for her.” 

The next topic that was asked at the event was how does stress appear in different people, and how does it affect different people? Rothschild said she had chose the topic because most stress tends to happen in December.

Kush said that “stress affects people behavior and it often changes” and “they change for the worse which is why you want to generally avoid stress.”

Daylyn added “physical emotions and other types of issues is when it happens.” She stressed that physical health was important to avoiding stress, and “misusing substances also causes it to happen.” She implied staying clean on substances was important in times like this and to stay the course.

Then Rothschild asked if the stress is related to specific times of the year, and some of the speakers implied that it indeed was.

Kush said “People often get more stressed during December because it is really close to the holidays, and people just want to get to that quick vacation and get everything over with.” Daylyn implied students often want to have “fun” during early parts of semesters, and the cramming stresses them out. Another speaker then added December is a lot colder outside so people are more tempted to be inside and these days there is a lot of  “ways” to be distracted inside the house, especially because people are used to it since 2020 since COVID.

Rothschild and the other hosts then held another meditation period and let everyone breathe for a bit so they can “have a second to de-stress” and then called the meeting over after an hour. Most of the speakers said it was very “useful” to them to have a safe space to relax and allow them to rest their mind, and they were glad to share the “knowledge” to anyone who needed it, because December is a tough time for any student or instructor.