Intellectual Well-Being
How will throwing away the standard image of well-being help our wellness journey? In this episode, Joe Zichi, the lead of the Well-Being Collective, explains how the beauty of failure, micro-dosing “discovery,” and the Well-Being Collective can all support your journey to greater intellectual well-being here at Michigan.
Give this episode a listen and let us know what you think! Follow GradWell and join us on our journey to greater well-being for graduate students at the University of Michigan.
Guests
Joe Zichi
Joe Zichi (he/him) is a higher education professional specializing in conflict resolution, student conduct, restorative justice, and organizational systems transformation. Presently, Zichi serves as the Well-Being Collective lead at the University of Michigan, where he provides backbone support for the university’s adoption of the Okanagan Charter. Previously, Zichi served as the associate director of the Office of Student Conflict Resolution, where he was responsible for providing programmatic oversight, formal and adaptable resolution processes, and supervision of the office. Zichi is experienced in Title IX resolution processes and was responsible for deciding sanctions and interventions under the Sexual and Gender-Based Misconduct Policy at the University of Michigan. Zichi provides consultation and training in adaptable conflict resolution, informal resolution for Title IX, and restorative justice for colleges and universities. Zichi contributed to Applying Restorative Justice to Campus Sexual Misconduct: A Guide to Emerging Practices (Williamsen & Wessel, 2023). He also served on faculty and as a track coordinator for the Donald D. Gehring Academy with the Association of Student Conduct Administration. Zichi earned a Master of Arts in Student Affairs Administration and a Bachelor of Arts in Political Theory and Constitutional Democracy, both from Michigan State University.
Resources
- Well-Being Collective
- Well-Being Toolkit
- Wellness Coaching
- Union and Pierpont Commons Wellness Zones
- Graduate Student Mental Health and Well-Being (Rackham)
- Calm App (Free for Michigan students!)
- Imposter Syndrome Resources (CAPS)
- Something small to do right now for your intellectual well-being: Check out Michigan Online
Transcript
Sam Hobson:
Hey, welcome to GradWell, a limited series podcast that explores various ways the University of Michigan can support its graduate students in their journey to greater well-being in our everyday lives. Brought to you by Rackham Graduate School. Each episode will explore a different dimension of well-being by interviewing a resource on campus that can help you thrive a little better. I’m Sam Hobson, a PhD candidate and a GSSA in Rackham’s Professional Development and Engagement Office. My fellow grad students, it’s time we start placing as much importance on ourselves as we do our work. You’re worth the effort.
Joe Zichi:
Being able to say, you know what? We tried this approach and it didn’t work, and that’s okay. We learned something from that. We’re going to change course now. Failure is beautiful.
Sam Hobson:
On today’s episode, we’re going to be talking about intellectual well-being with Joe Zichi. Joe Zichi is a higher educational professional specializing in conflict resolution, student conduct, restorative justice, and the organizational systems’ transformation. Presently, Joe serves as the lead of the university’s well-being collective, where he provides backbone support for the university’s adoption of the Okanagan Charter. Previously, he served as the associate director of the Office of Student Conflict Resolution where he is responsible for providing programmatic oversight and formal and adaptable resolution processes. Joe provides consultation and training and adaptable conflict resolution and formal resolution for Title IX and restorative justice for colleges and universities. Joe earned a Master of Arts in Student Affairs Administration and a Bachelor of Arts in Political Theory and Constitutional Democracy, both from Michigan State University. Hi, Joe. Thank you for being here with me today.
Joe Zichi:
Hi, Sam. Thank you for the invitation. I’m excited to spend some time with you.
Sam Hobson:
Yay. Okay. Joe, how did you get into this work?
Joe Zichi:
Well-being work is really important to me and really was at the heart of my career up until I joined the well-being collective in 2022. I think about conflict resolution, I think about dispute resolution between people really as a part of well-being. It’s a key skill that humans need to have. How do you engage with one another in a productive way? And also I just saw my work more and more being a subset of the larger eight dimensions of well-being for individuals, but also for systems and community structures as well. And so being able to go from more of the reactive service-oriented side of the university around conflict resolution to a more proactive approach at the systems level was really exciting. And it’s been a really fulfilling transformation.
Sam Hobson:
I really love this idea that conflict resolution is an aspect of well-being. It makes so much sense when you say it, but I’ve never really thought of it as that.
Joe Zichi:
I appreciate you saying that. Yeah, I think it’s a key component. I think we don’t often connect well-being and conflict or conflict transformation as related, but to me that connection is crystal clear and I’m just so excited to be able to bring that approach to the systems level of the institution and really to the principles of restorative justice and restorative practices into our larger conversations around our well-being at the institution.
Sam Hobson:
So Joe, as the lead for a collective on well-being here at the University of Michigan, what does well-being mean to you?
Joe Zichi:
That is such a great question. I’m so glad we’re starting with that question. Because for me, well-being does not have a one size fits all answer. The idea for a while on our societal narrative has really been well-being is connected to meditation or yoga or to physical fitness, but that’s just a part of it. For some of us and for others, it’s not the biggest part because we have to recognize that well-being at our individual level is often so informed and really shaped by where we are in society, what our identities and lived experiences have really gotten us to this point. And also how those identities and lived experiences are privileged in our society or are not. And so really when I think about well-being, I don’t immediately think about the individual. I don’t think about Joe as the person.
I think about what is my well-being as informed by the community in which I am a part of, because it’s really interconnected to my own well-being. At its basic level, Sam, I think about well-being as the conditions in which an individual and a community can flourish and thrive. And when you think about it that way, it really changes the narrative around only physical fitness or meditation or yoga, but really is more expansive into what is my intellectual well-being? Do I feel fulfilled as a human? Do I feel like I’m contributing to society? Am I making a positive impact or the impact rather that I wish to have on my environment? Those are all very important components to thinking about wellbeing.
Sam Hobson:
Yes, I mean, the narrative out there is definitely not who am I as an aspect or a component of my larger community and what does that mean for my wellbeing? And so to think of myself as, like you said, not an individual but rather sort of an existence and all that my existence touches then touches my well-being and affects. It is not necessarily an approach that we’re taught to take when we are told to go and meditate for 20 minutes a day and then all of our problems will be solved.
Joe Zichi:
Yeah. For some of us, meditation can be an important component to our holistic plan to tend to our needs and our overall functioning.
Sam Hobson:
Oh, Joe, I say this as a daily meditator.
Joe Zichi:
Okay, so you know. Yeah, but you also probably what I was picking up from you, what you were saying is it can’t just be the only thing that we hear as the activity that we should do. And I think you’re so right about the messages about things will be solved if you just meditated for 30 minutes a day. But what we don’t finish that sentence with is if you can. If you aren’t providing child care as a single parent. If you are not both a caregiver and a student and working, you might not have those 30 minutes. But what you might have is this sense of fulfilling your environment by recycling, by composting. It could be something a little bit larger than that, although that is significant. It could be feeling fulfilled.
In other words, I’m working in a job in which I feel stimulated, I feel challenged and I’m learning something that is building my perspective, my capabilities, expanding my horizons. So those are just some ways to expand our thinking about wellbeing and how we as individuals can engage in practices that really speak to flourishing and thriving. And once we think about it a little differently, meditation might be part of that, but there are so many other things that will come to mind that will contribute to our holistic wellbeing.
Sam Hobson:
So with all of that in mind, what are some mistakes that you see people making in their journey to greater wellbeing?
Joe Zichi:
Well, Sam, this is really challenging because I think we live in a society that most of us will follow probably at least one social media platform, if not a multitude. And we get so many messages. We’re bombarded constantly with what you should do. People should you a lot. You get shoulded a lot, and that can be really hard because what we’re doing is we’re basically coming up with these messages and we’re internalizing these messages that are saying, I have to do exactly what this other person is doing or telling me I should be doing, even though it might not work for me or it might not be practical for me. So what I think our challenges with saying it that way, Sam, is we are trying to do what other people tell us to do around our wellbeing, and we don’t really think about what we want to do or what makes us feel fulfilled or having our cups full.
And it’s totally normal. I think we just live in a society that is bombarded with shoulding, frankly, to put it that way. But the other thing I think we can do, and particularly as students at the University of Michigan or faculty or staff, we are in this environment that tells us either directly or indirectly, you have to be perfect. And that is exhausting and it’s overwhelming, and it creates this imposter syndrome amongst so many of us that it really has a negative impact on our wellbeing. I actually would say that one of the most common conversations I find myself having with students is feeling like they have to be as good as or better than their peers. And what I would argue, and what I think we all really would be better off thinking about is am I bettering myself from year one to year two?
So comparing where you currently are is a better measurement of your holistic development and growth than if you’re comparing Joe to Sam right now and a year from now. It’s really more about your current state and what you aspire to be, and then checking in with yourself to say, what’s going well? How am I getting there? And being able to say, you know what? We tried this approach and it didn’t work, and that’s okay. We learned something from that. We’re going to change course now. Failure is beautiful. Okay. So that’s the other thing I would offer was we think about one of some mistakes we make is we don’t accept the beauty of failure. We kind of learn a lot from failure. We think about the greatest accomplishments as a species we have made. It wasn’t batting a thousand, right? We made mistakes and we learned along the way, and that’s how we get better.
But we currently live in a society, and I think our academic community is one in which really has this perfectionist culture. You can’t be innovative if you’re striving for perfect all the time because you don’t fail. And if you’re not willing to fail. It means you’re not going to take risks. And if you don’t take risks, you don’t know what’s going to happen. We need more acceptance of failure in our lives, and I think that’s a mistake we all are living through is we are less tolerant to failure. And I think if we were more embracing of failure, we would be more forgiving of ourselves than others, but also we would, I think, be filling ourselves a little bit more positively and recognizing we didn’t figure it out this time. That’s okay, and we learned something with that, and we’re going to give it a go again and maybe it’ll work, maybe it won’t, but we’re going to keep trying and it’s okay to fail. I think we all would be a little bit more holistically well, if that was more widely accepted.
Sam Hobson:
Joe, oh, you’ve rocked my world. That failure is beautiful is, ooh, something I needed to hear. What I’m really pulling from what you’ve said is that we need to really start to learn how to sort of experiment on ourselves as scientists in this realm in one way or another. That is we, like you said, have hypotheses that we go out and test all the time as academics. And yet the idea of trying something out, seeing if it works, and then adjusting and adapting, it isn’t necessarily something that… I don’t know. It’s not really in the culture. Because like you said, you got to be perfect the first time. You’re out the womb and you already have a PhD, right?
Joe Zichi:
Yeah, right, exactly. It all takes work. Whatever we’re going to do in our lives, whatever we find our passion points in, it usually takes some exploration to figure those things out. And we’re probably not going to be experts at that right from the beginning, but if we remain interested in something, we are challenged by something, we will generally want to invest in ourselves in a way that lets us get better at something because we are called to do it. There’s something inside us that says, look, I don’t know what this is, but I really am into learning how to play the guitar. Let’s just use an example. None of us, I don’t believe, I could be wrong, but I don’t think any of us are born with the ability to just pick up a guitar without practicing before. So it all takes time and failure is how we get better and learn. So anyway, it’s not something we often hear about, but I think we’d be better off if we heard it more. Let me say that.
Sam Hobson:
Definitely. Okay, Joe, well-being seems rather important, but why is it so important that the university has created an entire collective focused on that outcome?
Joe Zichi:
What started initially was a task force from the provost office and from student life really coming together around the topic of student mental health. There were so many things that just became evident to the institution that said we need to think about why is mental health of our students in terms of requests for support and services, et cetera, what is really contributing to all of the high volume that we’re experiencing? And ultimately, it brought faculty, staff, and students together to really explore the why to that question. And through that collaborative work, identified 40 plus recommendations that the university should adopt to make change, to improve the well-being of students. But one of those recommendations was to sign onto the Okanagan Charter, and this is an international charter that was drafted in 2015. And this charter really says to the world of higher education that we have to recognize that the well-being of individuals is so informed by the systems and structures and environments that they find themselves in.
And we have to recognize things like systemic racism contributes to individual’s well-being negatively and positively depending on your identities and the privileges that you hold in society, recognizing that the institution itself has policies and procedures in place that were well-intentioned but are actually negatively contributing to student mental health. And that we should find ways to transform those policies so that they’re more informed by good well-being principles and practices. So the charter gives us calls to action to embed health promotion in all aspects of the university’s decision making. And also calls on institutions to contribute to the well-being of their surrounding communities and to the planet. So the quick way we think about this is the Okanagan Charter is really focusing on the well-being of people, place, planet. So it really started with student mental health, but as I mentioned, it really came to this realization that we could do all the system change in the world around student mental health and improve student well-being. But if we didn’t focus on staff well-being, if we didn’t focus on faculty well-being, we actually will never really address student well-being either because they’re all interconnected.
Sam Hobson:
Thank you, Joe. I really appreciate the consideration of a person’s positionality in terms of how that affects their well-being. That’s not necessarily the messaging that we’re given. It’s very much one size fits all, a lot of shoulds, and little recognition of how little some of these shoulds align with a lot of people’s lived experiences.
Joe Zichi:
Yeah. Well, and it was really creating and perpetuating this narrative that wellbeing is really only available to wealthy white women. When we think about wellbeing, we’re thinking about a thin white woman wearing Lululemon clothing and holding a yoga mat, right? I mean, that when you looked in magazines, when you looked in the news, when you saw commercials, that’s the messaging that we were getting. And it says a couple things just off the top. It says a lot, but off the top it says wellbeing is really only meant for a certain group of society, and it doesn’t include men at all because men don’t care about their wellbeing or folks who identify as men, and that’s not masculine enough. So that’s one thing it tells us, but it also tells us it’s really based on race. And as a white person, this is really well-being. And for everyone who doesn’t identify as white, it’s like, okay, well, here’s another example of society saying I don’t matter.
And look, more than anything, mattering is really at the forefront. What we know from data is that students, particularly incoming first-year students really struggle feeling like they matter. And if we think about all the different ways’ society tells us we don’t belong, it’s understandable why that’s the case. And what we are saying and what we’re trying really hard to do is to get over the narrative of there’s wellbeing really is only for one small group of our community. What we’re trying to say is, look, wellbeing means a lot. It’s important, but it’s not the same for everybody, but everyone deserves to feel like they matter and everyone does matter. And so how do we create the conditions for that to be the case?
Sam Hobson:
Okay. Okay. I get behind that message. Okay, Joe, so with all that being said, what exactly is the Wellbeing Collective?
Joe Zichi:
So the Wellbeing Collective, Sam, currently is 150 members of the University of Michigan, Ann Arbor community, and Michigan Medicine at the student faculty and the staff levels. And we have almost all the schools and colleges at the Ann Arbor campus represented. We are really focused on what are the systems and policies at the University of Michigan that positively contribute to well-being at the people, place, and planet levels, and how do we affirm those and maintain those? And then what are those policies and systems at the university that currently are actually having a negative impact on the well-being of people, place or planet? I have two examples to talk about, if I could highlight them, out of many. One is we’re already living through it, but the Wellbeing Collective submitted a recommendation to the provost, Provost McAuley, who ultimately made the recommendation to the Regents to change the academic calendar so that there’s about four weeks between the end of the fall semester and the beginning of the winter semester.
Prior to that, the break period was closer to about 10 days, and that’s really not a lot of time if we think about all the work students had to go through and faculty and staff during the fall semester, be expected to wrap all that up, take a break and be ready to go for the winter semester all in 10 days. That was not necessarily a health-promoting practice. The other example I have that we’re really excited about, and it’s going to be launched in the winter of 2025, is a asynchronous course for faculty or any level of instructor at the university on how to support students when they share a critical incident in their life to them, a mental health concern, a death in the family, some other unexpected life event that’s been challenging, and how faculty members can appropriately respond to the student as an individual, as a student, as a member of the community, get them connected to resources, et cetera, so that faculty feel equipped to support students.
And what we’ve learned from faculty at large have been saying, we want to help, but we don’t necessarily know all the resources. And so is there a way for that to be possible? And we’ve used the Center for Research on learning and teaching. They have a theater troupe, and they created through their actors scenarios that were based in reality that have happened in office hours, in classroom settings, and really have produced really high-quality modules. And we hope that faculty members will utilize this resource and it makes a positive difference. So those are just two examples of how we’re trying to change the culture, trying to change the institutional system to embed health promotion at all levels.
Sam Hobson:
I had no idea that was y’all, the change of the academic calendar. I would like to say as a student, thank you. Thank you. Okay. Joe, so the focus of today’s episode is on the intellectual dimension of well-being. That’s not a dimension that’s usually spoken about when we talk about well-being. What in the world is intellectual well-being and how does it relate to grad students?
Joe Zichi:
At its core, Sam, intellectual well-being is really about engaging in new skills or ideas for personal growth. We can think about that as pursuing knowledge and skill development, we can think about that as feeling stimulated and engaged with learning and staying open to new ideas and perspectives. Like so many other dimensions of well-being, it will mean a little bit of different things for all of us, but at its core, again, it’s really about that engagement in new skills or ideas for personal growth. That I think is so critical and really at any institution of higher education at its core, what are we trying to do? Introduce new ideas and concepts and being introduced and engaged with people who are different than ourselves, that have different experiences, different identities. The most innovative, the most creative, the most productive organizations are those that are the most diverse. And so really intellectual well-being encompasses all of that. And so you’re right that we don’t often think about that, but it is like all the others equally important amongst the eight dimensions.
Sam Hobson:
I see. So when you say engaging in new ideas, stimulating our creativity, you think as graduate students, we do that all the time. Right? That’s all we’re doing is drives consuming new ideas. So how can that get a little tricky or muddy for graduate students?
Joe Zichi:
As an adult learner, graduate students are really bringing in their whole selves to the educational environment, but that’s exhausting, right? And graduate education is you have to want it. You have to work really hard, I don’t have to tell you. And so it can be so easy to not make time for other parts of your experience, all of those other dimensions because of how quote-unquote “Busy” or how rigorous the programs are. Getting involved on campus, feeling connected to your cohort and your faculty, all of that is important. But also finding things that are in the community that are of value matter a great deal too. If you are a religious person, finding a religious community through a church, synagogue, temple, mosque, et cetera, or if you’re non-religious, but spiritual, finding humanists in the community, finding other folks who share your values or identities are incredibly important.
It all doesn’t have to revolve around Michigan, the institution, but there needs to be some connections to the place, the place on campus, the place that you’re living, et cetera. And so that really matters a great deal. It also contributes again to I think our holistic wellness because we truly at the core think about mattering. Do I belong here? Should I be here? And getting involved on campus and feeling like you are wanted, that you should be here really is a critical factor.
Sam Hobson:
Okay. So what I’m hearing is that although we as graduate students probably interact with a lot of new ideas and engage our creativity maybe on a very intellectual academic realm for most of the day, most of the week, most of the month, most of the year. And that well-being in the intellectual dimension is engaging with people, with ideas, with viewpoints, with perspectives, with experiences that are outside of our everyday typical day in day out.
Joe Zichi:
I think you’re right about that. That’s a great summary. I think some of that can happen in the classroom, et cetera, yes. But so much of it is also just your engagement outside of the classroom with your classmates or with your faculty or with your neighbor. If you’re living in a new place or you’re checking out a new park, it’s learning more about the place. Even restaurants, food, that can be a big deal as well. So it’s being open to really discovering. And I think that that’s true for all of us, but particularly it’s so easy to push to the side as a graduate student because you’re so busy with school and the demands where you’re like, “I don’t have time for any of that. I’m going to put that to the back burner. I’ll get to it in two to four years when I graduate.” What I would propose is that if you just infuse some of that regularly, dosing it amongst all of your other commitments, everything will be better off.
Sam Hobson:
I like this, this little micro dosing of interactions that contribute to just more positive wellbeing on a holistic level. Yeah. Does it always have to do with interacting with others? Would, for instance, you brought up the guitar earlier, would learning the guitar be an aspect of intellectual well-being?
Joe Zichi:
Oh, absolutely. I would say so. Again, going back to the definition, it’s engaging in new skills or ideas for personal growth. Yeah, it could be learning the guitar. It could be sketching for the first time, dabbling in watercolors, learning another language, or learning how to cook a different type of food than you’re used to. All of those things contribute to our intellectual well-being. Having a meal with a student from another country or another part of the United States who have a very different background or upbringing than you can do that. What I love about, for example, the Munger graduate residence on campus, is that by design, it brings in a cross-section of disciplines and folks living together in one suite.
And the idea there is to have that intellectual stimulation and that transdisciplinary engagement that in a graduate program, when you’re so specialized and focused, you won’t necessarily have. So if you had a nuclear physicist working with an MFA or living together, there’s this magic real estate that happens there that you just don’t know what it will produce. But yes, guitar for sure, language, cooking, all of those things can expand our horizons and our perspectives.
Sam Hobson:
Okay. And so how can the Wellbeing Collective help support graduate students’ intellectual well-being?
Joe Zichi:
That’s a really great question. The one place I would start with, if you go to the Wellbeing Collective’s website or you just type in Wellbeing Collective off the U of M’s homepage, there’s going to be a tools and resources section, and there’s this well-being toolkit that really allows you to focus on these different resources or considerations or ideas or activities based on each of the dimensions. So you can filter based on what dimension you’re looking for, or you could filter based on are you a staff member? Are you a faculty member? Are you a student? That’s one area I would highlight. The other thing that I think is really important for graduate students and it’s free is to set up an appointment with a wellness coach. The University of Michigan offers wellness coaching to any enrolled student. And if you just go to the U of M homepage and type in wellness coaching, you’ll find the link.
You can schedule an in-person or a virtual appointment, whenever you prefer. You can schedule everything online based on your schedule, what you’re looking for in a coach, et cetera. And it’s really an opportunity just to check in on you, what’s going well and what do you want to maintain? What’s not going well, and what do you want to do about that? And then the other factor is what do you want to explore? And some wellness coaches are professional staff who are health educators with years of experience. Some are masters of public health student, graduate students. So really have an opportunity to search with what are you looking for in a coach? And the best thing is if you don’t make a connection with your coach right away, we’ll help you find a different one.
And it’s different than counseling or therapy, which again is a great tool and resource. Wellness coaching is really a check-in on yourself and harnessing your own motivations in areas that you really want to maintain through the strengths that you have to do so, but also harnessing those strengths to work through some things that you wish would be different.
Sam Hobson:
I will definitely be signing up.
Joe Zichi:
Good.
Sam Hobson:
That sounds like everything I needed. Didn’t know was available. So I’m really grateful to you, Joe, for making sure that we know of all the resources that the university has to offer us. Before we go, I know that we’ve spoken a little bit here and there about all of the little things that we can do, but I want to ask you specifically what are the small things, the little things that US grad students can do towards improving our intellectual wellbeing?
Joe Zichi:
Step one is just give yourself some permission, right? Take breaks. That’s the little thing. Even if you give yourself five minutes, turn off your phone if you’re able, there’s some of us who can’t, but if you can turn off your phone or get a step away from your screen for even five minutes and just think about for yourself a minute to arrive for yourself. So for some of us that can just be closing our eyes and just taking a couple breaths. For others, it’s like looking at a picture or just looking out the window. Even if you just step outside of your classroom, your office hours, if you step outside of your apartment or your house or whatever, and you just take a deep breath, that can make a big difference. In the winter months, particularly for folks who are in Michigan, the sun doesn’t always come out.
That can be really hard for us. So if you’re on campus or you’re near campus, what I would recommend is go to the union or go to Pierpont Commons and go to the wellness zones that are there and spend 10, 15 minutes if you have time to go and sit in one of the massage chairs or have access to one of the seasonal affective disorder lamps that are available. The other thing that is a check-in for yourself for others to think about sometimes is, do I have a snack that makes me feel good available? Can I bring carrots and hummus in my backpack with me? Gosh, can I just get a latte today? Those are things that all contribute to our wellbeing. What’s the connection to all that with our intellectual wellbeing? Well, to me, if we don’t do those things, we really aren’t creating the ability to be fully present in what we need to focus on later.
And so if we don’t have the opportunity to treat ourselves to nature for a couple of minutes to just get away from the messages to social media for a few minutes, we’re always just focused on the doing, doing, and doing. And if we only focus on the doing, we’re not really giving us space to do the thinking and the thinking is our intellectual wellbeing. Our brains have to be ready to think. And if we’re only focused on doing, we’re really almost like living an assembly line, but as a living being that’s looking to thrive and flourish, it’s helpful if we can get out of that assembly line mentality and get out of the lab and go somewhere new even and talk to somebody different or… I mentioned the guitar, if you have five minutes, that’s okay. Get lost in the strings for five minutes.
The last thing I’ll say is there are also a couple relatively inexpensive things you can do, like a puzzle. If you’re able to work on a puzzle, even if you do a couple pieces a day over the course of a month, you might have the puzzle completed and that feels really good.
Sam Hobson:
Thank you, Joe. I really appreciate these recommendations. I love small things because they add up. Even as a person who resists doing small things because I tell myself it’s not enough, but what I’m getting from all that you have shared with us is just finding a way to create some space, even if it’s the smallest amount of space, creating a minute, 60 seconds of space for yourself has a reverberating effect over the long run.
Joe Zichi:
I think you’re right about that. Great summation again. There are some technologies that are able to help us with this as well. The Calm app, even going to calm.com can be helpful. You can set how much time you have, and it just gives you a quick mindful meditation if that’s what you need in the moment. Or you could just listen to waves crashing into the shore or something like that. The other thing, Sam, if I could, if you’re walking from point A to point B, or if you’re taking the bus from point A to point B, our tendency is a lot of times is to put our earbuds in or our headphones in and listen to a podcast or listen to music, et cetera. That can be okay, but what I’d also encourage you to think about is what would it look like to take a walk without those things?
What would it look like to listen to the sounds around you as you’re walking from point A to point B or just observing the world around you as you’re on the bus? If you have time to do that, some folks, again, because of all the things that make us us, we just don’t have time to do that. But if we do, or even if we do, occasionally, you’ll experience things in a very familiar place that you’ve never experienced before because all the senses that you have access to are being activated in ways that aren’t if you have a podcast going on while you’re getting to class or you’re reading a book and you’re not looking up.
Sam Hobson:
Okay. So start with the experimenting with Michigan Resources and maybe find some beauty in the failure and the ones that don’t stick, because we get to know ourselves a little better that way. Right? Joe, thank you so much for your time, for your wisdom, for your presence. This has been awesome. I’m really grateful.
Joe Zichi:
Thank you for the opportunity, and thank you for asking the questions around intellectual well-being. It’s not a dimension we often spend a lot of time on, but it’s so important, so thank you for making that the highlight of today’s conversation.
Sam Hobson:
Absolutely. Okay, so to bring this all home, here’s three takeaways and something small for you to get started. One, check out the Wellbeing Toolkit on the Wellbeing Collective’s website. It has workbooks, activities, and just tons of resources for every dimension of your well-being. Two, Wolverine Wellness offers free wellness coaching for students, which is different than therapy. You can choose a healthcare provider, a staff member, or even a fellow graduate student to help coach you on your wellness journey. And three, remember that our intellectual well-being is shaped by our willingness to do something new. I know it’s easy to get stuck in the monotony, so make sure to keep the romance alive in your relationship with yourself.
And for something small that you can do right now towards your intellectual well-being, go check out Michigan Online. It’s a repository that offers hundreds of educational opportunities in everything from social change to negotiation strategies, to learning code, to building just about any skill. There’s something new there for you. You can find all of these links and more at rackham.umich.edu/gradwell, and please email us with any questions at rackhampdeworkshops.umich.edu. And make sure to join us next time when I chat with Taylor Paul and Erin Gaines from Campus MindWorks about emotional wellbeing. See you then.
Hey, hardworking grad student. Thank you for turning into GradWell. I hope you can take something away from this episode with you. If you like what you heard, be sure to write a review, like, and subscribe wherever you get your podcasts. For more information, check us out on social at UMich Grad School.
