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.
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