Everything is Fine!: Mentoring to Support Graduate Student Mental Health

Through a dramatized series of conversations between graduate students and their advisors, Everything is Fine!: Mentoring to Support Graduate Student Mental Health explores the impact of structural and interpersonal issues on graduate student mentoring. To examine challenges related to mental health, depicted scenarios include candid peer-to-peer discussions of personal and academic challenges as well as more formal advisor-mentee meetings. This piece also takes into account the additional challenges presented by the COVID-19 pandemic to graduate student mentoring. Audiences will engage with the performance by thinking through strategies to improve their relationships with their mentees via facilitated discussion. The session is suitable for faculty.

The typical session length is 120 minutes. Everything is Fine! can be offered as a synchronous, virtual session or an in-person session.

**The theatrical portion of this session contains strong language and descriptions of challenges related to immigration status, mental health, race, political unrest, and the ongoing COVID-19 pandemic.

In this session, participants will:

  • Reflect on structural and interpersonal issues that create challenges in mentor/mentee relationships.
  • Explore specific strategies to proactively support graduate student health and well being and alleviate interpersonal challenges relating to mental health.
  • Consider how to apply these strategies to their own mentoring practices.
What people have said about Everything is Fine!: Mentoring to Support Graduate Student Mental Health :
Wow. Impressive performance from the script to the performances. So grateful to the CRLT Players for all that you do. This may be one of the most thought provoking performances that I've seen of yours.
The session re-affirmed many of my beliefs and practices. Thanks for the reinforcement and opportunity to practice listening and being sensitive to others' needs.
Click here to visit our What the Audience Is Saying page to read more.