RWS Discussion: Showing Up When You're Not Feeling Whole

This discussion centers the experiences of UMBC undergraduate adult learners with a specific focus on women students. An adult learner is a student 25 years and older.

Being a student is usually just one of multiple roles an adult learner in managing at any given time. With other roles like parent, caretaker, significant other, employee, friend (and more!), role conflict and feeling weary may already be a daily battle and managing this through a pandemic may only be exacerbating the challenge.

Despite the weariness, not "showing up" is usually not an option. So, how do we show up when we’re not feeling whole? How do we navigate the fatigue, the loss of support and community, the lack of restoration and still show up for our classes and studies AND our families, friends, co-workers, classmates, and most importantly, ourselves?

This discussion for UMBC adult learners will approach these questions by asking participants to explore their strengths and the assets of their communities. Through an interactive session and group discussions, participants will have the opportunity to engage with this topic by sharing personal experiences and brainstorming strategies to learn more deeply about the ways we can manage our multiple roles while being a student and find ways to balance showing up for others while showing up for ourselves.