Galentine's Day!

Here in 02A, we have a tradition of celebrating what we refer to affectionately as "Galentine's Day" instead of Valentine's Day. It stems partially from my maternal desire to stop the girls from dating, because dating (especially for teenagers) can often lead to poor decisions, heartbreak, and closing oneself off from friends, and getting so invested in the relationships that ones academic, emotional and overall well being can tend to slip.

The other thing our Galentine stems from is the fact that I truly love the ladies that we have in this wing of ours. I would much rather write "love notes" to the girls in the wing, telling them how smart, worthy, hardworking and beautiful they all are than write them to anyone else. And so, Galentine's Day was born!! It became an evening not only to distract them from not having significant others, but also to celebrate themselves and each other. It essentially became a way to showcase love and appreciation for their wingmates, and themselves in particular. I always put up a station on ways to properly love yourself as well, and that usually helps them to remember that we are only capable of truly loving someone else once we've learned to love ourselves first ♡

The evening allows the wing to create Galentine's for each other, as well as having a handful of friendly competition games that allow them to compete in their roommate pairs in Galentine style games to win prizes! We had a candy conversation heart stacking game, in which roommates had to see how many candy hearts they could stack in two rows back to back in 30 seconds. We had a word scramble of all Galentine phrases that they also worked on as roommate pairs. We had my personal favorite game, in which one roommate peels & places heart shaped stickers on her roommate's face to see who can stick the most stickers to their roommate in a one minute time span. That one in particular always leads to plenty of laughs and awesome pictures!

Gowri & Abby can't help but smile after the sticker game!

Clearly, Marisa & Vaishnavi reigned victorious in this game! They did well in it last year, too -- for some reason, VV's just really darn good at covering her roommate's face in stickers.... Well overall, I have to say that the evening was a lot of fun, a lot of laughs, and most importantly, a lot of love. There were a lot of positive affirmations, good thoughts, positive vibes, and great conversations throughout the entire evening. And in true grade-school Valentine's day party fashion, each girl got a paper bag outside their door decorated with their name, so they could drop off their Galentine's to each other after they had made them.

The evening was an even bigger success than last year, and I was glad to see them want to so eagerly continue the tradition. Each of the girls worked hard to create Galentine's for their wingmates, and as their RC, it made my heart very happy to see.

I am hopeful that the love will continue throughout the year, and that in the coming years, we will have plenty more Galentine's nights to come with these beautiful souls.

Love and heart-shaped chocolates to all,

 -- Robyn & the lovely ladies of 02A ❤

Bingo Boards!

January was a month filled with New Years Resolutions, so I figured I would set a few for the wing as a whole! We all know how hard it can be to stick to a resolution, so I put a little incentive on the ones I made, as well as making it into a game for the residents to take part it!

 

I created a "Bingo Board" for the 02A-ers to complete, with requirements for each square so that I knew they had completed it! I had them mark off with post-its each square that they did, and promised them a pizza party if we could get 2/3 of the wing to each do a row or column. 

The wing got a full month to work on it, and I was excited to see that 18 of the 22 girls each completed several squares off of the board! They earned the pizza party, but more importantly, I saw a lot of them learn some healthy habits that I am hopeful they are still working to continue today. Sophomore resident Abby Light even got recognized for doing the most amount of squares on the board -- she marked off a whopping 18 of 25 squares! For doing so, she earned herself a small Rest & Relaxation kit, including a mini dry-erase board and facial mask, to help her continue to stay organized and maintain self-care. Shout out to her for working so hard to mark off so many squares, and for making new friends and healthy habits along the way! She marked off the Make a Friend in the Wing square by getting to know some of our Seniors, while other residents got to know each other as well. Junior Marisa & Sophomore Gowri swapped Pandora study playlists, while Senior Mishelle took part in the Lunar Senior dance, enabling her to go outside of her comfort zone and strengthen some relationships along the way. Other activities students did included reading books not assigned for class (and mostly just for themselves!), going to the fitness center with a friend, doing a random act of kindness for someone in the hall, and making healthy eating choices at the dining hall!

By the end of the month, the boards were filled with post its and memories that I'm hopeful will stick with them all for the remainder of the year (well rather, I hope the memories will stick with them, not so much the post-its, but you get my meaning).

The (mostly) final results of the upstairs rooms & downstairs room boards (I say mostly because I took down several of the post-its as I was about to take the boards down and put up new buletin boards, and then remembered I wanted to take pictures for the blog. But hopefully this gives you an idea of how hard they all worked to make some good habits!)

We celebrated our pizza party the night of our Galentine's Day program, which was also a lot of fun! Be on the lookout in our next blog post for pictures and information from that. 

Making good choices!

-- Robyn & the lovely little birdies of 02A ♡