'Postcard' - 'Coping with Stress' from St Andrew's School, South Africa
On the 20th of March 2024, six students and one adult from DAIS attended the Round Square Postcard hosted by St Andrew's School for Girls in South Africa. The Postcard titled 'Coping with Stress' revolved around the theme of exam anxiety related stress. The keynote speakers including the counsellors from St Andrew's School shared insight into the symptoms, causes and signs of stress and anxiety. The prominent issues of anxiety related stress were thoroughly explored by helping students identify habits that caused exam anxiety, understanding the Stress curve and its impact on student performance, and sharing coping mechanisms that would enable students combat these issues.
The delegates were grouped into different breakout rooms to dive deeper into the postcard theme. Student leaders from the host school engaged the attending delegates in interesting and fun icebreakers such as - "What TV Show would you choose to live in and why?" This icebreaker helped all delegates warm up to each other and discuss openly some questions - "How do you feel about exams?" "What gives you stress?" and many more. These discussions soon turned into quick debates on different perspectives such as - 'is stress useful or not' and 'the difference between good and bad stress'. The delegates also shared their own coping mechanisms including spending time in nature, listening to music, sleeping, spending time with their family and enjoying with pets. Overall, the baraza sessions were a highly enlightening experience. After the conclusion of the baraza sessions, the delegates were led back into the main meeting waiting for a Q&A session with the keynote speakers.
Questions about dealing with procrastination, best coping mechanisms for stress, how to handle situations when you are unprepared were insightfully answered by the keynote speakers. DAIS delegates described the Postcard as an eye-opening experience that helped them learn strategies to deal with exam stress and coping mechanisms to handle anxiety, efficient ways to manage their time and being organized in all aspects of work while also understanding to distinguish between good and bad stress. An enlightening session, the Postcard enabled DAIS delegates to open their minds to accept different, improved perspectives to deal with stress allowing them to find novel yet practical solutions to implement these learnings in their daily lives.
DAIS Student Delegates: Aashna Agarwal, Aniruddha Chatterjee Divna Manek Sanaaya Joisher, Sia Agarwal and Vrushti Joshi
DAIS Adult Delegates: Ms. Amit Kaur Vaswani