Author: Oscar W '20
Being able to balance school and extracurricular activities is complicated, but keeping yourself healthy, especially around finals, is vital. Body health can range from staying injury free, all the way to getting enough sleep at night. It is also crucial to maintain mental health throughout the school year, from not being too stressed over difficult classes, to spending the social time with friends. Since I came to this school, keeping my body healthy has been a challenge. My freshman year, I came into Urban with absolutely zero time management, and I used to find myself staying up past midnight each night. I would be able to complete the school but would struggle to wake up the next morning and be present in my classes. Obviously, this method did not work out for me, but I still could not find a way to motivate myself to follow a better schedule. It took me until the end of freshman year to understand that working this way is not “healthy”. Being able to come to an understanding with myself that my work ethic was garbage and something needed to change was ultimately what made the difference. Similarly, with running, I would run 6 days a week, totaling over 50 miles a week. I used to wear shoes that provided no support, and as a result injured my knees. Despite this injury, I ran throughout track season with the same shoes and ignored the pain in my knees. Starting sophomore year, I refused to acknowledge that I was not at 100% health, refused to buy more supportive shoes, talk to a doctor, or go to physical therapy. Eventually, my injury got so bad my coach pulled me from the team and didn’t let me run at NCS. At the time I was disappointed in his decision but realized I needed external intervention to realize I wasn’t healthy. I have maintained decent mental health throughout my three years at urban, but I find the biggest areas of stress stem from my parents. I have always been able to balance stressful school work and social time. However, I often argue with my parents, so completing school work at home was quite difficult. I found ways to circumvent arguments by working in the library or at a friends house. However, all these solutions only allowed me to avoid the situation, instead of fixing it. During the times I was in an argument with my parents, my biggest resources were Riley Maddox (my advisor), and Kaern (counselor). I didn’t really feel like talking to my friends, but being able to talk to another adult about my situation was very helpful. Overall, physical and mental health are important to student life, and it is vital that you take care of yourself, whether it be recognizing you are injured, or simply talking to another person about stress in your life.
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Author: Avery S '20
These cookies are AMAZING and super easy to make. They are also gluten free and vegan! Here is the link to the original recipe that inspired these! Enjoy baking <3 Ingredients: For the wet ingredients: ½ cup (12 g) natural smooth almost butter ¼ cup plus 3 tablespoons (150 mL) pure maple syrup 3 tablespoons (45 mL) virgin coconut oil, softened but not hot ½ teaspoon pure vanilla extract For the dry ingredients: ½ cup (50g) gluten-free rolled oats ¼ cup plus 2 tablespoons (50g) gluten-free oat flour ¼ cup (33g) arrowroot flour/starch ¼ cup (25g) almond flour ½ teaspoon baking soda ½ teaspoon pink Himalayan salt (150g) 55% non-dairy dark chocolate (about 1 ½ bars) Directions:
Author: William D '20
If you’re like me, you procrastinate and/or have anxiety. In my years of procrastinating, I’ve learned a few things about how to admit I’m human and be ok with my procrastination habits occasionally, while still getting things done. Here are the procrastination strategies:
Anxiety is more difficult to deal with. I haven’t found a way of completely eliminating it, but I have a few strategies to make it more bearable:
Not only do I find it relaxing to focus on my breathing, but watching the gif itself also helps.
If you are interested in how procrastination and anxiety work together to make people miserable, check out this ted talk. Author: Robert C '20 Hi all. If any of you guys want to relieve some stress or just love to watch dope videos about food, I strongly recommend Bon Appetit's youtube channel. They do a bunch of random videos that provide an appealing array of enticing cooking videos with chefs that have a lot of personalities. For example, they recreated Lucky Charms with common healthy cooking ingredients. This has helped me relax and take my mind off school as well as learn more about how to cook. Here is a link to a video of a chef making Skittles! AUTHOR: Hannah S ('19)
Disclaimer: We at HIPE are not health care professionals. Please contact your healthcare provider before using of any form of birth control. Remember that prescribed birth control does not protect against STDs and all of these forms of birth control are safest used for sex when combined with a condom. Given the results of a survey sent out to the student body, the following are the most commonly used types of birth control, but are not the only forms. Always consult your physician or health care provider before going on birth control. Types:
Again, these are not the only forms of birth control, and you should consult your doctor or heath teacher with further questions. <3 HIPE AUTHORS: Clara M ('18) and Margot B ('18)With prom just around the corner, hype about clothing, dates, ticket expenses, and after parties is filling the halls of The Urban School . HIPE is here to break it down for y’all...
We separated stores that have the less expensive clothes to the more pricier ones as shown by the dollar signs. OUTFITS: $ Forever 21 Xenia Boutique Nordstrom Rack Rent the Runway Missguided Zara Express H&M $$ Free People Anthropologie Reformation Dolls Kill (if you're feeling freaky ;) ) Zara J. Crew Have fun dressing up! This is a unique opportunity to show off your fashion knowledge. Your gender identity does not define what you wear - feel free to ask Que Gillach or Ronan Weber about LGBTQ+ questions/concerns. DATES: It is important to remember that dates do not define you, your date, or your relationship with your date. Communication between dates is essential to avoid misunderstandings about expectations and relationships statuses. Do NOT worry about finding a date. Dates do not need to define your prom experience. In the past, Clara and Margot have gone with friends, with dates, and even with each other. Every experience has been a blast, and don’t be shy to reach out via email or in person about questions! Consent is ALWAYS necessary before every sexual act (and even during). Never assume that just because you went as a date with someone, a sexual act is expected. Make plans with friends you trust to avoid feeling unsafe or uncomfortable. TICKETS: Communicate with a date about paying for dates. DO NOT ASSUME that someone will pay for you. If you feel nervous about paying TALK TO CHARLOTTE!!!!!!!! No one wants money to be a limiting factor on your night. PRE/POST PARTIES: Breathalyzers are used at every school dance, and will be at prom. DO NOT GET LIT PRE-PROM. HIPE cannot emphasize this enough. While post-parties are a fun way to wrap up your night, many people enjoy grabbing milkshakes afterwards, watching a movie, and even going home to sleep right after prom (dancing can be exhausting). Post-prom parties are often exclusive to upperclassman so don't expect to be going out to a party as a freshman or even a sophomore. We hope those tips help you get through a happy, healthy and SAFE prom! <3 HIPE AUTHOR: Hannah S '19So, you have some free time. Maybe you finished all your homework, you just got back from practice, or you just need a little break. A nice bath sounds really good to you, so you run it. 15 minutes later you’re sitting in a lukewarm tub of water, and you can hear your family yelling. How do you fix this stressful mess? Let me tell you.
AUTHOR: Hilary R ('19)With the copious amounts of representation of women's bodies in the media, it is important to understand that body standards change frequently and there is specifically no ONE TYPE of ideal body. Perception of our individual physiques derive from what we see depicted as “beautiful”, “sexy” or “pretty” in the media. However, what is not advertised well enough is what really matters most; that you feel confident, comfortable and healthy in your own skin. Body satisfaction is a known struggle for most adolescent teens but it is a significant component to self love as well as sexual pleasure. Achieving a positive perception of your own body will make sexual connection with another person or yourself way more intimate, pleasurable, and fun. As well as a positive sense of your body, a genuine smile and confident attitude can make someone more attractive instead of altering their body in ways that are unhealthy. While looking at the snapchat discover of buzzfeed (as I do), I came upon this video that they created portraying different “ideal” body types throughout the years. You may have seen this before but I think that it is a lovely reminder that the idea of the “perfect body type” is utterly ridiculous because women's bodies have, and are continuously changing. Although this article is specially oriented toward female body image, here is also a great piece about men's body image representation . It’s #3, ”The ugliness of body image” AUTHOR: Will '18Throughout my growing up, whenever I got too anxious for my mother to handle she would storm out of the room and shout “just go meditate!” in a feeble attempt to calm me down. As one might expect, this didn’t make me very eager to look into the transformative effects the practice could have on my life.
I was certainly not unique in being opposed to – and intimidated by – the concept of setting time aside to sit and do nothing but pay attention to my breath every day. With anxiety being the primary driving force behind productivity in high school, it’s easy for the brain to rationalize that meditation is a “waste of time” and that we have “better stuff to do.” But – if you are someone who spends a good chunk of time every day playing video games or scrolling through Instagram, what makes meditation any more unproductive? Odds are, your resistance to meditation is discomfort disguised as practicality. A meditation session can be however long you want it to be. It can be as short as one minute (during the minute of silence) or as long as ten months (check this out). The most common practice, and easiest to start off with, is just sitting silently and paying full attention to your breath. I find that it helps to mentally say “bu” on the inhale, and “dah” on the exhale to draw my attention in more fully. This is so that my inner voice has less room to jump in and assault me with seemingly urgent thoughts. The primary purpose of meditation is to give us a pause from our neurotic thinking patterns and relax into the simple joy of being present and alive. Once we focus our consciousness on our breath rather than our thoughts, we make room for peace and warmth to come in. As soon as you get comfortable and silent before meditating, your neurotic inner voice will start generating all kinds of thoughts to fight against your practice. “I’m so uncomfortable… this isn’t doing anything… I don’t see any thoughts in here… my time would be much better spent doing my math recycle… I’ll just meditate later.” It can be extremely challenging not to act on these thoughts at first – just know that they are not you. You are the one who observes these thoughts passing before you. You are the silent and knowing awareness of the thoughts who has the ability to choose whether or not to associate with them. You may be thinking, “What do you mean? How can there be a distinction between me and my thoughts? There’s no one but me in here…” That is your internal voice – and if you pay too much attention to it you lose your awareness of who you are. Your being aware is not contingent on the existence of these thoughts. The thought of awareness without these thoughts may be scary, but it is indescribably liberating. Just think: when you are skiing or participating in some sort of fast-paced activity where there is no time for abstract thinking, it is pure bliss and flow. These activities draw you out of your patterns of thoughts and mental abstraction and force you into the reality of the present moment with only awareness. Just imagine if you could live your life with that much presence! If you really watch what your internal voice has to say about the world, you’ll notice that it constantly feels vulnerable and threatened, and therefore lives in a state of fear and want – unless it feels good about itself based on external circumstances. Just think about it – that needy voice has led you around your whole life! What would it be like to be conscious apart from that voice’s demands? Have the courage to just be in your body and bypass your brain. Try to feel what it feels like to be alive and relax into that feeling. The feeling of being you and not your thoughts. Relax into the calming rhythm of your breath. That is the purpose of meditation – to separate us from our panicked brains that seem to have problems with everything, and instead relax into our true being. Our true being accepts all – and therefore has no problems. It helps us see that life is not as complex and cruel as our brains make it out to be. If you are willing to explore this by starting a daily practice, I recommend meditating for five minutes in the morning or evening, and slowly expanding that time as you become more comfortable with longer sits. There is so much more to being alive than pursuing the needs of our neurotic thought patterns. Mentally understanding this does not reveal the truth of it, you have to feel the beauty and warmth in consciousness. Have the courage to experience the joy of being for yourself. Best wishes, Will P.S. If you’d like more resources to delve deeper into becoming more conscious and present, I’ve found that the Power of Now by Eckhart Tolle is an amazing resource. Additionally, the East Bay Meditation Center in Oakland holds a free teen meditation event every Wednesday at 7pm titled Teen Sangha. Feel free to email me if you have any questions, want book recommendations, want to carpool to EBMC on Wednesdays, or just want to talk! AUTHOR: Margot B ('18)
BONUS: Nighttime snacks to help you sleep: Yogurt Banana Whole-grain, low-sugar cereal Tea Emergen-zzzz drink packets: they are infused with melatonin and will make you sleep through the whole night! Herbal, non-caffeinated tea |
AuthorDylan M Archives
December 2023
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