The advising office’s new wellness workshop series began this week with a deliberately early start date. “Support that arrives during examination week is arriving late,” said counsellor Ruth Ellison, who leads the series. “The habits that carry people through pressure get built in the quiet weeks.”
The four sessions, running fortnightly, are practical rather than clinical: workload planning, sleep routines, recognising stress signals early, and where to find one-to-one support when it is needed. Sessions are drop-in, and attendance at earlier ones is not required for later ones.
The four sessions
- Planning a workload you can actually carry
- Sleep, screens and the week before deadlines
- Reading your own early stress signals
- Knowing the support map: who to talk to, about what
Details
- Fortnightly, Wednesdays after last period
- Advising centre, room 2
- Drop-in — no sign-up needed
- Materials published in the portal after each session
Ellison stressed that the workshops are general skills sessions, not a substitute for individual support. “If something is weighing on you, come and talk to us directly — any time, not on a workshop schedule,” she said. The advising office’s one-to-one hours are listed in the student portal.
The series will repeat in spring, adjusted by an anonymous feedback form that closes after the final session.
Why the timing changed
The series replaces a single “exam stress” session that ran, in previous years, during examination week itself — timing Ellison now describes as well-intentioned and useless. “Attendance was high and application was zero. You cannot rebuild a sleep schedule on Wednesday of exam week.” The redesign followed the advising office’s review of when students actually sought support: requests climbed steadily from mid-term, weeks before the examination period, which is exactly where the new series now sits.
The series is also collecting its own evidence. Attendees can opt into a brief anonymous check-in at the start and end of term, tracking self-reported stress and sleep; the advising office will use the results, alongside attendance, to decide whether the early-in-the-term timing genuinely outperforms the old exam-week session it replaced. “We redesigned this based on data,” Ellison said. “It would be strange to stop collecting it now.”
