The Wellness Center held its weekly Hi-Tea Social 10 a.m. to 2 p.m. Dec. 17 with a few attendees enjoying tea, snacks, cookies and comradery.
“The Hi-Tea event is to allow students to gather and basically, you know, hang out with each other and grab a cup of tea and socialize,” said Dayna Marchek, the program coordinator of the OSHE mental health grant.
“It’s a little bit different today because we have the wellness club in the center today using the main stage area, so we set it (the tea social) up in the nutrition hub today.”
“I think it should be really nice. It’s the end of the semester, so we really want to make sure students have the opportunity to come relax, unwind a little bit, and have the ability to grab a cup of tea or grab some food that’s in the Nutrition Hub and just have a little moment to practice some self-care and not worry about any stress related to classes or finals or the upcoming holidays,” said Patrick Zavorskas, the Wellness Center coordinator.
“We have a variety of different teas, herbal teas, Matcha teas, sometimes we have chai tea, but we ran out. We have snacks available for people to come. And we just try to make it really low key, just a really fun, inviting time and just again, having a safe space for people to come and just take it easy,” Zavorskas said.
“We really just want to facilitate connections, like between students, and allow them to … get to know one another,” he said. “To have a space for them to hang out and communicate with each other, and maybe they can study together. I see a couple students now just studying, or a lot of students come just to hang out and get a breather,” Marchek said.
“It’s a pretty laid-back event. I mean, we do it every week, and, like I said, people, it’s pretty much, you know, the students lead it themselves. So, we put the tea and cookies out for them. They’re free to come anytime that they want between 10 and 2, and we just let them hang out.”
“We are hopefully doing it more next semester, for the Spring. Hopefully we’ll have a lot more options and varieties and more snacks and stuff, and hopefully we’ll have like different icebreaker challenges to do in the beginning of the semester,” Zavorskas said. “But we really want people to bring their friends, bring people that they might not know, especially in the start in the next semester, and just know that the Wellness Center is a safe space for them to come and just relax and take it easy.”