Cambridge’s Special Interest Group for Wellbeing & Inclusion is excited to welcome you into the start of 2022 Michaelmas term! As we finalize our term card of events and talks for you, we wanted to kick off term with an introduction into the committee for this year as well as share our blog.
The blog is open to any and all University members no matter your discipline or where you are in your career. We are interested in holding a space and sharing conversations spanning a wide variety of topics and intersections for wellbeing & inclusion. Blog posts are a great way to reach a wider audience for your own work, increase your social media presence, practice writing accessibly for audiences who may be in a different field than you, and it can serve as an additional creative outlet for topics you’re excited about. If you are interested in contributing a blog post this year, please send an email with your topic to our blog coordinator, Sydney Conroy.
Our committee this year is made up of Ros McLellan (SIG Chair), Nomisha Kurian (SIG Coordinator), Wanying Zhou (SIG Coordinator), and Sydney Conroy (Blog Coordinator). Please feel free to reach out to any of the committee members for questions, event or speaker topics you’d like to see, or even to grab a coffee/tea!
As many of us here at Cambridge have moved from other places in the world, we thought for our first blog post of the year we’d acknowledge that and share some insights from the committee that might be helpful as you settle (or resettle) in!
What have you found works well for you in maintaining long-distance friendships?
Wanying: Long-distance friendships, in my opinion, do not require regular messaging or calling every day. I only occasionally send funny videos or images I find on the internet to my friends. I find it sweet that we don’t sit together but still laugh at the same thing as usual.
Sydney: Being flexible with different expectations and energy levels that you and your friends have – usually this has meant having some sort of conversation about how to maintain the friendship with distance so feelings don’t get hurt unnecessarily! The variety of apps that are out there are helpful different friends: Marco Polo, BeReal, Cappuccino, Netflix Party, and Koya are some favorites of mine that I use.
Nomisha: Long-distance besties have a special place in my heart as I have moved around a great deal and am still in touch with close friends across different continents. I enjoy watching movies with them on Skype and holding digital teaparties where we both change our Skype wallpapers to a mutually agreed fun theme to make us feel we’re hanging out in the same place (from castles to dog parks!). Sending each other lots of photos, voicenotes and letters helps too.
Ros: WhatsApp groups have been a game changer. It allows groups of old friends, and families, to not only share news with each other is a low-key kind of way but also reconnect through shared humour (gifs) and gossip, reinforcing bonds and feels more intimate than facebook or instagram. In the old days old friends generally connected 1:1 through emails and phone, which feels so much more intrusive and demanding.
What is your favorite self-care or community-care activity in Cambridge?
Wanying: Explore Cafés with friends.
Sydney: Picnics are a favorite care activity of mine (when the weather is supportive of it!) – shared food, nature, dog sightings!
Nomisha: Drawing animal doodles, baking apple pie, sunset walks, and rereading my beloved Anne of Green Gables books.
Ros: My favourite self-care activity has to be a morning run (well jog) into our local nature reserve. There is something magical about the blackbirds and robins scattering from the path in indignation as I plod past them, and the sounds of the babbling stream is so soothing. The changing of the colours by season keeps me grounded. Occasionally I’ve been lucky enough to catch sight of a kingfisher or muntjac deer. The power of nature and awe cannot be understated
We hope you had a wonderful Fresher’s Week and are looking forward to this upcoming year with you all!
Sydney
Cambridge Wellbeing & Inclusion SIG 