The Vulnerability Collective

Looks like resilience (Penn’s Resilience Project and UW’s Resilience Lab) is a bi-coastal theme! Spotted @ Van Pelt Library

http://www.dailyuw.com/news/article_51806b3a-ef29-11e6-87d9-7beb37ee416b.html

Vulnerability Collective: Untold stories, shared In today’s highly curated online world, we tend to only share our personal wins. It can seem like others have it easy, but this isn’t the case for many.

A years work culminated tonight! Thank you to everyone who came!

Thank you Justin and Leanne for helping get posters out today for the February 8th event! RSVP here: https://catalyst.uw.edu/webq/survey/anneb7/323537

The final proof on the way to the printer! Thank you Luke McJunkin for all your hard work!

“You know, a lot of students struggled with this exam. And the average was in the upper 30s”.
I told him that I understand that the average was in the upper 30s, but I totally bombed it.
He said, “You don’t understand, everyone bombed it”.
I said, “No, I really bombed it.”
He asked what I earned and when said “8 of out 125”, he closed his eyes in dismay and said “Oh boy.”

He asked me what happened, as if I was something had happened out of the ordinary like a medical emergency or a death in the family. I told him that nothing had happened, but did ask if there were any points I could get back. He said no, the molecule is either right or wrong. “This is Organic Chemistry” he said. Change a “Bi” for a “Mono” or a “Tri” and you have a bomb instead of toothpaste."

Excited to announce that 'the big event', the read-aloud of The Vulnerability Collective will be on Wednesday, February 8th!

Copies of The Vulnerability Collective will be finished and we will be having a web-presence leading up to the event. For those of you who were interviewed and contributed stories last Winter and Spring, please be looking out for an email in the next few days regarding a bit more information needed from each of you.

Now's as good a time as ever to share a story of challenge, obstacle or struggle, as The Vulnerability Collective was granted $5000 to get into print through the inaugural Husky Seed Fund!

Your identity will remain anonymous, and your story has the power to help someone who might be feeling the same way as you once were. Additionally, The Vulnerability Collective team is looking to onboard writers/interviewers for Fall 2016. You could earn General Studies 391 credit or Honors 499 credit. Email [email protected] with any questions!

Check out the UW Resilience Lab and The Vulnerability Collecteive featured in The Daily! http://www.dailyuw.com/features/article_8d29c73a-1671-11e6-b32c-375c98d06349.html

Normalizing failure: The Resilience Lab A reminder that the act of struggling is human

"I started feeling abdominal pain. I got a pap smear after my doctor suggested it, but it did not come back clear. I thought maybe there was an ulcer or something. My test results came back that I was positive for cervical cancer. I remember that my doctor said “you’re at full stage cervical cancer”. I couldn’t really hear what she was saying, I couldn’t process anything. I hung up the phone. I didn’t tell anyone in my family and I didn’t tell my boyfriend. My sister was about to get divorced, and my parents were each getting surgery. I didn’t think it was my place to come in and say I had these problems."

"Fall quarter of my freshman year was unexpectedly hard, but overall it was manageable - everything was new and everyone was having an identity crisis. But winter quarter was the worst. My roommate hated me from the moment she met me - and she was rude to my parents. I seriously looked into transferring, or moving home to the not-so-good community college near my parents’ house and working in a restaurant there. Looking back, I’m really not sure what stopped me from doing that. I remember being so unbearably unhappy."