The secret to "living well"

Each semester, Professor Carol Kennedy has her "living well" students write letters to loved ones who have hypothetically died. In the letters, students have to tell a loved one how they feel about the person. Kennedy said one student last semester wrote a letter to her father, whom she thought was well at the time.\nLater, she discovered he was dying of cancer. The student decided to send the letter to her dying father to let him know what he meant to her. The result, she said, was life-altering.\nDealing with grief is just one of the tools Kennedy's "living well" class provides for its students. According to the class philosophy, being healthy extends beyond exercising and eating right. As part of the School of Health, Physical Education and Recreation, Dean David Gallahue's mission to service campus life and combine the three components of HPER -- applied health science, kinesiology and recreation and park administration -- "living well" teaches students how to obtain balance in their lives to be healthy. The class gives students tools to deal with their personal lives and feelings as well as their physical health.\n"If you don't take care of yourself while you are here, it is difficult to learn and retain it," Kennedy said. "If you are not well during your college experience, you are really missing out."\nAt the beginning of the semester, Kennedy required students to set semester-long goals for themselves in writing. She then assigned them into random groups of three to mentor each other to obtain these goals. \nEric Ratner, assistant coordinator for the class, said watching the students adjust to their mentoring groups was interesting because most of the students in the groups did not know each other when mentoring began.\n"By the end of the semester, most of them are saying 'I didn't realize that someone I didn't know could help me so much,'" Ratner said.\nRatner said the groups are particularly effective because the students do not have pre-existing friendships and have very different personalities. \n"Getting feedback from someone you don't see everyday can be really beneficial because they don't hold back to protect your friendship, and they give honest reactions," Ratner said.\nRatner said the trouble with getting advice from friends is they often say what they think you want to hear to avoid conflict and protect the relationship. In mentoring groups, students don't hold back in their advice to their peers so reactions are truthful. Also, people often choose their friends based on similar interests and personalities. The students in the mentoring groups can have very different personalities and might not otherwise speak to each other. They are able to give each other very different advice and reactions about situations than their friends would, Ratner said.\nStudents in the mentoring groups create strong bonds with each other.\n"The purpose of the class is to make the big community smaller," Kennedy said. "Some people make lifelong friends in here."\nSome students pledged to become more physically fit over the course of the semester, and others hoped to get a grip on their problems with procrastination. Each class period, the students meet with their mentoring groups to talk about the progress they have made in obtaining their goals.\n"We know through research that people are much more likely to achieve a goal if they have support," Kennedy said.\nJunior David Mickler's goal for the semester is to work on his writing each day. He said he has been writing a lot more since the mentoring began.\n"I find that when I meet with my group, it really encourages me to express an area of myself that sometimes the stress of school doesn't allow me to pursue," Mickler said.\nKennedy said she hopes the mentoring program inspires students to go out and mentor in the real world. \n"In the grand scheme of things, we would like to connect students to service in the community while they are on campus," Kennedy said.\nHPER is in the process of developing a stronger leadership development program that would provide service to the community. Fitness Specialist majors are already required to do 150 internship hours external to their coursework. \n"living well" is an offshoot of the leadership development program which would create mentors for various nonprofit service organizations in Bloomington. \n"Mentoring in the community seems like it will be a natural fit," Ratner said. "People will be able to come from this class with the skills to mentor."\nEach week, Kennedy invites a guest lecturer to teach the class about special topics. In addition to the typical wellness lectures of nutrition, weight management and exercise adherence, guest lecturers speak to the class about personal finance, relationships, sex, body image and media influence among others. African American Choral Ensemble Director James Mumford gives a presentation on passion that Kennedy said has been the most popular and moving lecture each semester.\nAfter each lecture, Kennedy has students write and submit journal entries about what they learned.\n"When they journal, we want to read it," Ratner said. "We notice that students really absorb the content days with guest speakers. It's amazing what they retain. It's amazing to see people say what they learned."\nKennedy said the lectures about relationships seem to have the most effect on her students. Many students leave the class having made changes to their existing relationships. Kennedy said after a lecture about what it takes to maintain a healthy relationship, a lot of women in the class realize their current relationships need to change. Last semester, one student's written statements at the beginning of the class were about how important her boyfriend was to her. At the end of the class when she presented on how the class had changed her, she revealed she and her boyfriend were no longer together because of what she had learned over the course of the semester.\nRatner said at least half of the guest speakers are people who approach them wanting to talk to the class. Speakers often want to come back to speak again because Kennedy provides them with feedback by sending them student journal entries for the day they spoke.\nMickler said "living well" has taught him how to live a more balanced life, set goals and stop procrastinating. \n"I think it's really good to start on a smaller level before helping your friends and family," Mickler said. "In order to help anyone else, you have to be able to help yourself, and they give us really good tools in here to do that."\nKennedy said she thinks everyone should take this class their freshman year so they have the tools to live a balanced life while starting their college careers.\n"If you already live well, we'll help you live better, and if you aren't living well, we'll help you get there," Kennedy said.\n-- Contact staff writer Jenica Schultz at jwschult@indiana.edu.