Be. - A Loser Podcast

This talk is for everyone who is about to graduate and is contemplating their next career steps. In this episode, we explore the high-pressure world of graduate recruitment and the toll it can take on students’ mental health. With career goals, family expectations, and financial pressures weighing heavily, many students find themselves running on empty while trying to prove their worth. This conversation unpacks the real sources of career pressure, the hidden costs of burnout, and how stress impacts performance and well-being.More importantly, it offers a practical toolkit for thriving: cultivating self-awareness and adaptability, managing time and priorities, developing resilience, and embracing healthy daily habits that protect both career ambition and mental health. Whether you’re preparing for interviews, navigating job rejections, or setting long-term goals, this talk equips you with strategies to build balance—without breaking under pressure.Because success isn’t just about what you achieve. It’s about how well you sustain yourself while getting there.

In an era of endless scrolls, swipes, and algorithm-driven feeds, our messaging as student counselling units must evolve to meet students in the spaces they occupy. This interactive workshop equips student support professionals with the tools and frameworks to design multimedia content that captures attention, communicates key messages clearly, and encourages student help-seeking. Whether delivered through posters, reels, carousels, or flyers, content must now be more than visible—it must stick.This workshop draws on Richard Mayer’s Cognitive Theory of Multimedia Learning (CTML), which offers a set of evidence-based principles that should help us communicate critical mental health information in ways that are accessible, emotionally resonant, and relevant for students. By applying CTML principles, namely, coherence (removing unnecessary detail), signalling (highlighting key ideas), segmenting (breaking content into manageable parts), and personalisation (using relatable tone and imagery), participants will learn how to create content that informs, engages, and empowers.The workshop is structured into four phases:1.     Understanding the student mindset: exploring digital habits, stigma, and help-seeking barriers.2.     The fantastic four: applying CTML to visual and verbal messaging strategies.3.     Framework in action: presenting a step-by-step model for student-facing content creation.4.     Create and collaborate: participants design mental health messages using accessible tools like Canva or mobile apps.

As artificial intelligence becomes increasingly embedded in the lives of university students, a growing number of young adults are turning to AI-driven platforms—such as Meta’s WhatsApp chatbot and ChatGPT—for companionship, emotional support, decision-making, and even therapeutic conversations. This conceptual paper explores this emerging trend through the ethics of care and an ubuntu-informed lens, reflecting on how it is reshaping the ways students navigate loneliness, care, and connection on campus.Drawing on literature, this paper examines the trends in how university-aged individuals use AI chatbots as a first line of emotional or psychological support. It also considers growing research on loneliness, disconnection, and the erosion of deep relational bonds among young people. From this literature, three key research questions emerge for further exploration: (1) Are AI platforms becoming substitutes for human care in environments where time and space for relationships are shrinking? (2) Does the anonymity and safety of AI discourage the vulnerability necessary for genuine human connection? (3) Are students experiencing emotional support while remaining relationally disconnected?Guided by Ubuntu Theory and the Ethics of Care, the paper argues that AI may offer convenience but cannot replicate the mutual responsibility, ethical accountability, and relational depth embedded in traditional care systems – family, friendship, and community. It cautions that the increasing personification of AI risks replacing the very human connections that Ubuntu compels us to nurture.The paper invites student support staff and mental health practitioners to reflect on how their services can evolve to remain relationally relevant while responding to digital shifts, without surrendering the communal principles that make healing possible.

In the emotionally demanding context of higher education, therapists serve as vital pillars of student well-being. Yet, their own need for sustained psychological resilience and support remains unexplored and fully addressed. This conceptual paper explores how both new and experienced therapists within university counselling units define, experience, and practice self-care within their professional realities. The paper is theoretically grounded in the Ethics of Care, which foregrounds relational interdependence and the moral imperative to care for those who care; Emotional Labour Theory, which highlights the psychological toll of managing others’ emotions; and the Socio-Ecological Model, which frames practitioner well-being as a result of interactions between individual, interpersonal, organizational, and systemic factors. Through a review of relevant literature and informal qualitative anecdotes of professional experiences shared by both novice and experienced therapists, the paper addresses the following questions:(1) How are the increasing and complex mental health needs of university students shaping the demands placed on counselling staff?(2) What forms of emotional labour are required of student counselling staff, and how do these affect their personal and professional well-being? (3) What structural or cultural barriers within universities hinder sustainable care for counselling staff?(4) How do newer vs. more seasoned practitioners experience institutional support and navigate self-care differently?These questions emerge from a growing body of literature that highlights the intensifying mental health needs of university students, the resulting emotional labour and burnout experienced by counselling staff, and the insufficient institutional structures in place to support their well-being. It aims to generate critical insights into how institutions can move beyond individualised self-care rhetoric to implement systemic, relational, and structural responses that uphold the well-being of those who bear the emotional and psychological weight of supporting the student community.

As a church, we were challenged by a Tim Keller talk called "How to be changed by the gospel part 2" (https://youtu.be/r68hC7CJsFc?si=LTCg2qmE3-6SVMl9) And I was asked to delve deeper into this conversation. I was asked to look into identity, morality, and how we may struggle to believe what Gospel says, especially that we all need saving. Of course I did the things that needed to be done. I even had slides to truly unpack this conversation. I hope and trust that this will be a blessing for you, even if you were not in the room and are not a member of our house church.