Fraser Hall Library to host finals week stress-busting events
May 16-18, the Fraser Hall Library will be hosting stress-busting events to help students unwind from long hours of preparing for finals.
On May 16 and 17 from 1 p.m. to 3 p.m., a therapy dog will be available to students in the library, as well as snacks and pizza, including vegetarian and gluten-free options. On May 18, students will be able to make their own ice cream sundae while supplies last. Students will also be able to decorate note cards with drawings and inspiration for students studying for finals that will be displayed in the library.
Alana Nuth, Head of Library Collection Management, said that the library has held events like this at the end of every semester in the Milne Library, and that she wanted to provide the same kind of support to students in the Fraser Library.
“The library has always done this in the past. I don’t know exactly how far back, but usually around the end of the semester especially. This happened a lot before we transitioned into Fraser Hall and before COVID, we used to always plan some sort of event to support students during finals week because we know that it's stressful. Between finals and students graduating there’s a lot going on for them, so we usually try to plan some sort of event to support health and wellness during that week. We’ve done this for a number of years but then we kind of got out of sync because of COVID. Everyone was remote and then we moved to Fraser, but now we’re basically getting back on track,” Nuth said.
Nuth said that the stress-busting events are always themed, and that this semester’s theme was inspired by accident.
She said, “We have some fliers that we made and some bookmarks that we’ll be distributing this week and next week. One of our librarians designed all of that for us and so when I asked her, I said, ‘Can you design a flyer for our stress-buster events?’ And she kind of ran with this idea of a Ghostbusters-like theme of busting stress for this semester. I think it was in 2019. The last time we did this, we had a lot of sweet treats since the word ‘stressed’ is desserts backwards, that was kind of our theme last time.”
According to Nuth, these kinds of events are common on college campuses and in libraries around large populations of undergraduate students. She said that she looks forward to being able to alleviate some of the stress that students are feeling around the end of the semester.
She said, “I know that it’s not uncommon for college libraries to host these types of events, or other city libraries and libraries around a large undergraduate population as well. To host events like this around finals or around the end of the semester is just our way of trying to make [finals] more fun for students. It’s actually something that we look forward to doing every semester. It’s fun for us because we’re only planning the event, we’re not the ones actually taking the finals and writing papers and doing presentations and all that. We hope it helps at least a little bit and makes the end of the year something to look forward to more than dread.”