The Mental Health Awareness Club has partnered with the Counseling Office to raise awareness about various mental health issues. 

Counselor Ms. Strear spoke about how the Counseling Office is using monthly themes to raise awareness about mental health Though the Counseling Office does focus on students’ mental health, this is generally separate from the Mental Health Awareness Club. 

 “Ms. Kaempf is the main adult for that but we do partner with them. So we met with Ms. Kaempf and the three leaders of the club last week, just to talk through some of the themes and the different ways we could cross promote and support each other,” said Strear. Each month will focus on a specific theme. 

“Last month in September, it was just mental health matters. And this month, we’re focusing on perfectionism, and then we just have a different theme for each month and just try to raise general awareness for students,” said Strear. 

Next month, the theme is scheduled to be stress and anxiety. 

While the two groups partner for specific things, the Mental Health Awareness club has their own goals for the Just Say No To Perfect movement.  

“[It] deeply connects with the club because striving to always be perfect does take a toll on one’s mental health because it looks like unrealistic goals,” said Quinn Geunes, one of the leaders of Mental Health Awareness club. 

Perfectionism has become a large part of our culture. There is a push to make everything we do absolutely perfect, which can have a harmful effect on our mental health. 

Joseph Hsin, a senior who is currently juggling college applications along with typical senior classes, offered his opinion on perfectionism. 

“Perfectionism is really detrimental to our lives because nobody is 100% perfect. If we look at our lives through a perfectionist stance, we will always be disappointed. Perfectionism probably is made worse by social media because we see perfect lives on social media even though no one is perfect,” said Hsin. 

Geunes spoke about the goals she plans to accomplish through both the ‘Just Say No To Perfect’ movement and specific goals for the Mental Health Awareness Club. 

“Just normalize failure, basically, and that you’re not going to be perfect every single time and that becoming successful is part of the journey of having failures and learning from those, not how you’re going to find success,” said Geunes. 

Failure is an important part of life. It helps encourage people to grow and become better. An example of something the club has done to raise awareness for the movement is to put messages up on signs in the cafeteria. So far, these signs have included messages from faculty and recent graduates. Additionally, stories from famous people, such as Pitbull, have been featured. 

Ms. Strear shared her thoughts on the message boards. 

“[I hope this can] help students understand that it happens to all of us, it’s just part of being human and you’re still gonna be okay. And you can still achieve and accomplish your goals,” Ms. Strear said.  

These boards can help students realize that failure is okay; that you can still accomplish great things, even if you do fail along the way. 

According to Ms. Strear, some next steps for the ‘Just Say No To Perfect’ movement are to continue partnering with the Mental Health Awareness club. She also suggests partnering with Student Government to help raise awareness. 

One last suggestion Ms. Strear had was to expand the message boards by one more step: to current students. 

“I would love it if we had students who wanted to submit their high school mess ups. That would be amazing. I don’t know if we’re there yet because that’s making yourself pretty vulnerable,” said Strear.