Great Grads: University Hill students learn about the science of stress, help each other cope

VANCOUVER (CityNews) — University Hill Secondary graduate Sally Elhennawy and her classmates decided to learn about stress to help students with the demands of a competitive high school.

But living through and graduating during a pandemic means these lessons have become more relevant.

“Our aim was to kind of learn about the science of stress and how we can reduce the stress level within our school community. So we had presentations, we worked with some PhD students from UBC, we worked with some professors, we watched TED talks, we tried to learn everything we could, we discussed articles” she explains.

“Then we took our information and we put on events at school and tried to educate the student body about what we had learned about stress and how to reduce it.”

She says in addition to understanding the science of stress, sharing struggles is an important path forward.

“I think that we’re starting to reduce the stigma around mental health issues which is a really good thing. In the past, it’s not something that was talked about but I think that there are lots of new things in society that can cause stress, for example, social media. But we’re getting better as a whole at talking about it,” she adds.

The pandemic itself has taught Elhennawy some lessons about stress and how to handle it.

“Something that getting through this pandemic has taught us is that good things can happen when we remain positive and hopeful,” she says.

Elhannawy plans to major in Cognitive Systems at UBC, the program focusses on human and artificial intelligence.