Your Guide to Wellbeing at University — Sage Perspectives Blog

By Gretchen Geng and Leigh Disney

If you are currently studying at a university, do the following scenarios sound familiar?

You are a new university student. During your secondary school time, you were always considered to be a "high-level" student. However, when you began university study, you noticed most of your peers were also successful in their work. This sudden competition surprises you and sometimes brings you frustration. Even when you spend long hours, and intense commitment, you do not always achieve the results you want. Your feeling of personal exhaustion makes your efforts counterproductive.
You found it difficult to focus during an early class; you had to drink multiple cups of coffee to stay concentrating on your studies. You wonder how your peers can remain active and fresh during their class activities.
You just found a part-time job working in a retail store starting from 1 pm straight after your lecture at the university, so once your lecture is completed, you need to rush to work. You have no time to ask your lecturer questions, nor can you have an academic conversation with other students. Once you come home after work, you become so exhausted that you cannot focus on your studies and assignments.

University can be a challenging and demanding time, and you face a range of stressors such as academic pressures, financial concerns, social challenges, and life and study difficulties. Stress can be caused by various factors such as exams, deadlines, coursework, research, social events, personal relationships, and balancing work and school. In short, we have academic performance standards to satisfy; we have family commitments to fulfil; we also have our own social-emotional and mental health to look after. Starting a new learning journey could mean the beginning of our time in higher education, turning a new page within our career pathway, or an exciting opportunity for further professional development. However, juggling work, family and study commitments, we may consistently feel overwhelmed to bring sufficient energy and a positive attitude into everything we do.

In the book “Your Guide to Wellbeing at University", we show you how to understand and recognise the stressors of university life, look after your wellbeing, generate full energy, and achieve high performance and success through four areas, being physical, emotional, mental and spiritual.

Our book uses real students' success stories and strategies to help you in developing personalised strategies to build your physical, emotional, mental, and spiritual resilience. These success stories help you plan and set personal goals, get the most out of the support available to you, and achieve the right work-life balance for you. Examples include:

My friends and I really enjoyed reading. We developed a book club for ourselves. We set up a schedule to read together online. The books were not always academic or related to our study, they could be novels, thrillers, newspapers, or any social media papers we are interested in.

I found it useful to remind myself what goals I am aiming to achieve… As I was changing my academic goals during my mature age and just after my health has been improved, I was considering changing my career and would like to be a teacher instead of an IT technician… When setting up my goals, I used monthly goals to start with. I make them clear by writing them up and putting them next to where I can see them every day.

Finally, based on Neuman Systems Model and Full Engagement Power, we introduce various energy-planning exercises and techniques which you can then develop throughout your university life and beyond university.

References

Loehr, J., & Schwartz, T. (2005). The power of full engagement: managing energy, not time, is the key to high performance and personal renewal. Free Press Paperbacks.

Neuman, B. & Fawcett, J. (2011). The Neuman systems model (Fifth edition.). Pearson.

Learn more

Book Details
Your Guide to Wellbeing at University
Gretchen Geng and Leigh Disney
April 2023
ISBN: 9781529763201

About the Authors

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Dr Gretchen Geng is currently the Deputy Head of School in School of Education Victoria (Melbourne campus) at Australian Catholic University. Before that, she was a Vice President (curriculum) in the International Educational Groups at Beijing Foreign Studies University, the Teaching Lead at the DVC (Education) Office of RMIT University, and an Associate Professor in Pedagogy and Learning at Charles Darwin University.

Before her tertiary career, Gretchen was a preschool and primary school teacher and had years of practising experience in teaching young children and school-age children. Gretchen has also been involved in using digital educational technologies in teaching school students in the global learning context.

Gretchen has a strong interest in curriculum development, technology use in students' learning, and students' health and well-being. Currently, she is working on developing a model to assist university teachers' teaching competencies development.

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Dr Leigh Disney is an Early Years lecturer within the Faculty of Education at Monash University. Prior to this, he was an Early Childhood lecturer at Charles Darwin University. During this time, Leigh has worked with both undergraduate and postgraduate students across the field of initial teacher education.

He began his career in the early years working as an early childhood educator in both prior to school and school-based settings for over 10 years. During this time, he developed a detailed knowledge of the educative and care needs of children within the 0-8 age range. Specialising in supporting young children’s social and emotional development, as well as curricula domains of science, technology and mathematics. Leigh has also spent time working in China on projects related to cross-cultural early childhood practices and the implementation of play-based learning within Chinese preschools.