With fall term rapidly progressing, many students are struggling with mental and emotional well-being. To help Carleton students find an outlet to express their feelings and receive needed support, Student Health and Counseling (SHAC) runs a variety of therapy groups like the Queer and BIPOC Mental Health Collectives and the perfectly named Dude Talk.
However, many SHAC employees have recently recognized that students have much more specific emotional needs, and new groups are needed to prevent burnout and reliance on harmful coping mechanisms, like nightly Sayles $7 mozzarella sticks or becoming a barefoot person. Thus, after much research and consideration, SHAC is proud to announce a brand-new slate of therapy groups for Fall Term 2024.
The Coop: A support group for the victims of LDC chicken mishaps
With scores of students enduring improperly prepared chicken breasts at every lunch and dinner, The Coop serves to provide support and advice to help students cope with these incidents and prevent new ones. Meeting every other Wednesday from 2:30-3:30 pm, The Coop will teach proper microwaving etiquette in the case of raw chicken, provide resources on salmonella, and try to find the psychological roots of why people think things like the chicken coconut curry and chicken mozzarella will be any different..
Swipe Right: Group counseling for friends with one person on the 7 meal plan
Sensing a dining hall issue of an entirely different caliber, SHAC therapists have devised a solution to rifts and chasms in friend groups within the class of 2027. Meetings are Mondays from 6:30-7:30 pm in an attempt to have dinner in a campus house for once, and topics include how to strategically choose the dining hall with the best food to accommodate limited meals, examining how many of the seven swipes are actually left at the end of a student’s week and the benefits of changing scenery for group meals, like the lack of a need to do the “Liberal Arts 360” before sharing gossip. That being said, in order to best guarantee the lack of need for the 360, students should simply plan to have dinner privately with their friends.
Closet Conversation: A support space for those struggling to cope with dressing for changing weather
As we see daily high temperatures fluctuating 20 degrees within a week and weather conditions within a day changing from pajamas-and-jacket weather in the morning to shorts and t-shirt weather in the early afternoon, followed by t-shirt and pants in the late afternoon, sweatshirt and pajamas in the evening, and back to pajamas and jacket and Hi-Vis jacket and sunglasses at nighttime, students are being thrown into a frenzy trying to pick their clothes for the day. With meetings every morning five minutes before you have to leave for class, trained counselors will support students in dressing in layers, sweating for the sake of an outfit, and how to effectively pack a winter coat for the freezing environment of Sayles without taking anything out of your bag or making your bag heavier at all.
Pact Away: Group support for straight men who didn’t get a Marriage Pact match
After groans and cries were heard around campus with the announcement of Marriage Pact matches, SHAC has swooped in to address the mental health crisis brewing among the unlucky straight men who were the victims of the gender imbalance of marriage pact, and are now doomed to be single forever. Supportive strategies in this group include deodorant application training, reducing time spent on YikYak, and considering the possibility of dating the other men on your football team? Meeting from 4:00-4:03 pm every Thursday, this group hopes to attract as many of the 69 left behind as possible. This group serves as a trial run, and if successful, SHAC is considering starting another group for the heterosexual and bisexual women who were given a low-percentage match with a straight man.
