Hi, I'm Khadija, and you're listening to Manchester Voices, and I'm joined by some amazing Manchester Voices with me here too.

Hello, I am Dorsa, and I am a second year biotechnology student.

Hi, I'm Dara, I'm a postgrad, and I study cognitive neuroscience and neuropsychology.

It sounds way fancier than it is.

Women in STEM, love that.

I am a simple management marketing student, and today we're talking about well-being and being students that are in university, we really have to manage our well-being.

So, before we get into the well-being, right, I have interesting facts that I just learnt about University of Manchester, or Manchester in general.

Yesterday, I was on my way to the Manchester Museum, which is beautiful, by the way, and I was stunned by this, like, lion-looking, not-so-lion-looking figure.

Turns out she's a Taigon.

Her mum was a lion, and her dad was a tiger, and she was...

Is that possible?

Yeah, apparently, I didn't even know they existed.

And she was bred, like, the hybrid was bred by humans, because naturally in the wild, tigers and lions never meet, except for one tiny area in India.

So, I think that was pretty interesting that they decided to make that hybrid.

I think that's pretty cool.

Did it have an offspring?

No, she did not.

I think she lived in Manchester from 1936 to 1949, and when she died, her skin was preserved with the Manchester Museum, and her name is Maud.

We should shout out to Maud.

Hello, Maud.

Shout out, Maud.

Yeah.

Slay Manchester.

Okay, so, my fun fact is that Manchester's Northern Quarter is actually used as a movie set double for New York sometimes.

And, like, the first Captain America movie, and also The Crown, and some other, like, shows as well.

They pretend it's New York.

My fun fact is that my granddad came to university here.

He got a scholarship, and he was also the valedictorian in 1964.

No, he has two degrees, so I'm not sure if he did law here or if he did his education degree here, but that's my only fun fact.

Granddaddy went here.

R.I.P., bro. Big flex.

But, yeah.

Okay, so now we can jump into well-being.

Question number one, how do you feel in the run-up to exam?

I mean, I think I stress myself out so much until the first exam, and then when that's done, I'm so exhausted.

I can't give any energy to the rest.

But, yeah, just stressed and overthinking everything is how I can put it.

Yeah, I can relate to that.

When in the run-up to exams, I feel anxious, like anxious with four S's, like anxious.

I've been known to avoid exams, and I've managed to avoid exams for most of my university experience because I've gotten a panic attack before from exams.

Let's say, but that's just days before exams.

Weeks before exams, I have spikes of motivation where I'm like, yeah, let's get it.

I'm on my rocky Eye of the Tiger tunnel vision.

And then I see how much I actually have to do, and I'm making my to-do list, and then I'm demotivated again.

I'm like, nah, I'll get somebody else to do it.

This is not for me.

But I would say that if you break your to-do list into more doable chunks or doable tick boxes, then that's helpful, that's helped me.

Because at the end of the day, whether I get anxious or not, I still have to get it done, don't I?

So I break it down into things I can get done in five minutes or two minutes, and then if I still feel like doing it, I keep doing it.

And if I don't, then I'll move on to something else and come back to it.

But yeah, that's definitely helpful for me.

I think the mindset that this is going to be over in 24 hours, this is going to be over in a week, in one week, I'll be so happy and free, that keeps me going.

Yeah.

So what I would do is do objectives in the week rather than a schedule, because schedules stress me out.

I will, in the past, be like, I'll get up 9 a.m., never happens.

So every Friday, I'm a little social butterfly.

So I plan things around my weekend.

So I know by next week Friday, I want to go to this party or I want to go to this event.

And what objectives should I complete by then?

And so, let's say I have four courses, I need to complete one chapter per course, I need to complete homework for two courses, whatever.

So I know what I have to get done for the week, but there's no set day or set time, it's just like whenever I think I'm in the mood to do it.

So like, I know every day I have to get something done, but it's what mood am I in on this checklist?

Yeah, I think that sounds really good, because definitely from experience, schedules can be restricting.

Yeah.

And it's like, when you get put, let's say you don't wake up at 9 a.m. or you don't go to the gym at 9 a.m., then you're just like, oh, well, everything else that was supposed to follow it has been messed up now.

And you feel like you don't have the motivation to get anything done anymore, or at least that was the case for me.

So I definitely agree that objectives are the way to go.

The way you planned it around meeting friends and going out is definitely something good, because that's taking care of your well-being as well, being around friends and family and not just being in front of your books or a screen all day.

Yeah, I was going to say, I really admire how you manage your work-life balance, because if you don't have the balance, you're not going to be able to work.

If you're exhausting yourself with work, you're not going to want to do it anymore.

During exams in the year before you came to university, how did you manage your well-being?

I did not manage myself well at all.

Not my well-being, not my studying, not my time.

It was kind of a wreck.

But if I could go back and advise myself, I'd probably say start earlier.

Because I was trying to scramble to do six subjects in two weeks. But yeah, I would definitely say start earlier as well.

I try to be as prepared as possible, because the more prepared I was, the less anxious I was.

So I definitely prepared a lot and I tried to plan as many responses as I could to questions, like practice questions.

Because then I just felt like if I saw the paper, I'd be more confident that I've done something like this before, I can do it again.

Another thing I did was I allowed myself to have mental breaks.

And by mental breaks, I just mean moments of silence.

No music, nothing to stimulate my brain.

I literally just wanted to have no thoughts.

And this would be maybe when I'm eating, or if not when I'm eating, then when I'm waiting for the bus.

Because the way I move during exam seasons is I'm constantly multitasking.

I'm taking my flashcards everywhere.

But that's not always healthy.

And just having a break and not thinking about anything was pretty helpful as well.

So I actually had an anxiety pad.

That's what I call it.

So I had this little pad that I would take around in my backpack or my purse or whatever.

And anytime I felt anxiety, I would write about the anxiety.

I didn't care where I was.

There was a point I was writing 20 times a day in that anxiety pad because I had so much anxiety.

And so in my early 20s, I just became very mental health-focused.

Because I did my undergrad in psychology.

So by default, I was already in the environment to be mental health-focused.

So besides the anxiety pad, every evening I took time to just do breath.

Just have deep breath in, out.

I'm Christian, so I'd spend some of that time just having a chat with God.

Kind of just connecting to something more than myself.

I also wrote poetry.

Very painful poetry, let me tell you.

I also used to dance.

So sometimes anxiety has no concept of time.

I would wake up at 3am and be like, wow, I'm having an anxiety attack.

What to do?

And I would go in my apartment yard and just dance for an hour or however long.

And it just made me feel good.

So I think the way that I managed my well-being was just mindfulness practices and movement.

Exactly, yeah.

Mindfulness for sure.

It's a lot harder to do than say, I think.

Unplugging yourself from thoughts, from social media and everything.

It takes a lot of discipline, which I don't think I really have.

I'm always reaching for my phone if I'm on the bus.

I put it away and I'm like, okay, let me just check Instagram.

Let me just check my calendar, just because I can.

Yeah, me too.

I don't speak to that many people and I'm always checking my phone for messages.

I don't know what I'm looking for.

It's this attachment to our phones that we have.

Mindfulness is definitely a skill you can practice and you can build up.

I wasn't always perfect at trying to declutter my mind or quiet the mind.

But another thing that I did was visualising.

So I visualised how I would feel when I left the exam hall or how I would feel when I opened the paper and I saw the questions.

I would feel like, yes!

Oh my gosh, I prepared for this question!

I would visualise how I would breathe.

How I was actually breathing.

So I would catch myself in the moment if I was breathing fast or anxiously.

I would just calm myself down.

Because I've pictured this already.

I've never heard of that.

I'm going to try that.

Yeah, that's a dope one.

I feel like I'm very philosophically behind.

I don't know all these mental health advices.

No, no, no.

I think I have a lot to learn.

I mean, learning is good.

That's what conversations are for.

I know for the week I want to go to the gym four days.

I know I want to get X, Y and Z amount of sleep.

I know when it's possible to get that amount of sleep.

I know I have these chapters to complete.

There's homework to do.

And just seeing it written down into segments and reminding myself, oh well, a day has 24 hours.

It's actually not impossible to do.

If I just listen to my body and give it rest.

And do chunks of it bit by bit.

And being realistic too.

Because if you cannot do more than four things, don't do more than four things.

Don't lie to yourself.

Definitely, being realistic is so important.

And even three to four things, sometimes you can...

Don't set expectations for yourself.

My dad always tells me to be realistic with my expectations.

But I just want to get rid of the expectations, the word.

I want to get rid of the word should.

If I was the leader of a country, I would get rid of the word should.

Because expectations really did me a disfavor.

And contributed to my depression when I went through depression.

Because I was always like, I'm supposed to be the smart girl.

I'm supposed to be the well-organized one.

Because that's how people described me.

And I really took on those labels.

That that was who I was.

And then when I wasn't doing anything that aligned with that character that I saw myself as.

And I expected myself to be.

I went through an identity crisis.

Who goes through an identity crisis at 18 years old?

Please.

That's like a midlife crisis before midlife. Every single year.

I'm 27 and I've gone through at least two identity crises.

But yeah.

Even if you get one thing done, that's okay.

Or even if sleep is what you got done in the day.

Sleep can be productive to you.

Don't deprive yourself of sleep.

I don't think we count things that are also productive.

In our bed at the end of the day.

And we're thinking, what did I do today?

I was so useless.

You weren't.

You got up.

You brushed your teeth.

You had breakfast.

That's not something everyone can do.

Exactly.

I think the word of the day is probably grace.

Just remembering as a student to give yourself grace.

To take your time and not be like stringent about everything.

Don't compare yourself for one.

Because I know that during exam season.

Or just whenever it's academic season.

Like when summer holidays are finished.

Or summer holidays are about to end.

I'm going on YouTube.

I'm going on TikTok.

Looking at people's routines of how they're revising.

And how they're planning themselves.

Or looking at people timetabling.

How they're going to timetable their entire university life.

And I'm comparing myself.

Like, okay, yeah.

She's doing this.

Or he's doing this.