As end of the quarter builds, having time off around the Holidays can be a much needed chance to rest, recharge, and reconnect. For many students, trips “home” can be simultaneously enjoyable and frustrating. It can be particularly challenging to enjoy a sense of freedom while living away from home and then lose some of this freedom when you re-encounter rules or expectations. It might be helpful in this case to have a frank conversation with your parents in which everyone’s needs and hopes for the break are taken into consideration.

For students who struggle with family relationships, returning to home can be stressful. Sometimes the holidays can remind us of what is missing in our family life – or even loved ones whom we have lost. If you will be traveling home and find yourself struggling, it may be time to attend to self-care.

Sometimes, all it takes is a few minutes to refocus and ground yourself and simple strategies such as:

• Listening to music…

You may have heard the phrase “Title IX” tossed around campus — it sounds big, it sounds important, but it also sounds vaguely like something that should be left to the tweed-adorning professors of yore. Well it is important, and it is meant to protect you as students!

Title IX was first enacted in 1972 nationwide by the federal government in an effort to eliminate sex and gender discrimination from education. However, the long and short of it is that this was widely interpreted as “have women’s sports.”

In 2011, federally funded educational institutions were further advised to reduce barriers to education for women, in part, by addressing issues related to dating violence, sexual assault, sexual harassment, and gender discrimination. The University of Oregon, as a federal institution, honors Title IX and works to reduce the impact of gender discrimination…

Are you easily distracted? Do you struggle with getting organized when you have a paper to write? Do you tend to forget appointments or frequently lose your keys or phone? Do you feel like your mind is a motor that is constantly revving?

Then it’s possible that you have ADD. The only way to know for certain is to be assessed by a mental health professional. This typically involves a few interviews, some psychological tests, as well as an interview with a parent or someone else who can describe your early school history.

Other conditions exist that produce some of the same symptoms of ADD. A few examples are anxiety, post-traumatic stress syndrome, and bipolar disorder. A formal evaluation is usually able to tease out ADD from these other disorders. And it’s possible for ADD to co-exist along with other mental health issues.

Many students do not discover that they have ADD until they encounter the lack of structure and increased demands of college. Prior to…

This past weekend, I took an evening walk and realized that, although nothing looks terribly different just yet, I was able to feel the cool bite of fall in the air for the first time this year. Then I thought — once again, it’s time to say goodbye to summer and welcome the start of another academic year. For some of you, that means returning to familiar faces and places, but with the added promise of a year full of new classes, people, and other experiences. For those of you just starting out at UO, it means the beginning of an entirely new chapter of your life. Although our experiences may be different, we are all looking at an upcoming time of change.

As a psychologist on campus, one of the things I find myself frequently hearing from students is some variation of, “But I hate change!” I hear this as an acknowledgement that change can be scary and hard. Research tells us that even the changes we welcome, such as going off to college or beginning an…