health

Let’s talk about mental health in academia

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A few days ago Canada was abuzz with messages about mental health for Bell Let’s Talk day. The social media campaign resulted in Bell donating 6.5 million dollars to mental health initiatives in Canada, which is great. But I’m not sure that one day a year when everyone feels comfortable talking about mental health publicly actually helps reduce the stigma around mental health, one of the stated goals of the Let’s Talk campaign. Any other day of the year, it’s still pretty difficult to bring up mental health issues, so this post is partly an effort to continue the conversation. Continue reading →

Making time for exercise on a regular basis

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There are a couple facts that make regular exercise an obvious choice:

  1. Exercise makes you healthy and happy.
  2. Exercise helps you focus and get more work done, even after you subtract the time spent on exercise.

Those two things are definitely true for me.

Nonetheless, historically I’ve done a crappy job of getting regular exercise. Continue reading →