Dr. Koestner (bottom left) chats via Zoom with Dr. Dana Carsley (top left), Dr. Vera Romano (bottom right), and interviewer Genee Latreille (top right)
Cultivating Opportunities with Dr. Richard Koestner and the Student Wellness Hub
Many students may know Dr. Richard Koestner from his work with the McGill Human Motivation Lab in the Department of Psychology. Dr. Koestner has been researching human motivation and goal-setting for over 30 years, and has a knack for connecting complex ideas to tangible, real-world examples. Conversations with him feel like a meditative journey which leaves you feeling content and inspired. This feeling carries through his new collaboration with the Student Wellness Hub, a series of uplifting and inspiring videos through social media called Motivation Mondays.
The series came about through a Student Engagement Collective working group over the summer, led by Dr. Dana Carsley, Associate Director of Resilience and Wellness Enhancement in the Student Wellness Hub. Dr. Carsley was looking for ways to boost student resilience during COVID-19. Dr. Koestner had received feedback from students in his courses that they wanted accessible motivational content, and it quickly became clear that Motivation Mondays was the perfect fit to meet both needs.
“We kept asking ourselves, ‘What can we do to support students?’, and Motivation Monday was always our main project. Every time we brought this to our meetings – both within the [Student Engagement] Collective and in the Hub – everyone was so excited about this collaboration. What’s cool is that this was really directed at students initially but the reach is so much bigger. It goes beyond just the students and so many other people are watching it,” says Dr. Carsley.
Dr. Koestner experienced the power of that reach first-hand recently when he was jogging in his local park on a weekend and was approached by a former student. Not only did she thank him for the experience she had in his classes, she also mentioned how much she appreciated his weekly Motivation Monday videos! This sentiment is echoed by Student Wellness Hub Director Dr. Vera Romano.
“On a personal note, this project has a different kind of meaning,” says Dr. Romano. She highlights that Motivation Mondays and the collaboration with Dr. Koestner have a particular significance for her. “I’m transported back to my own experience in the classroom. It’s such an opportunity for our team to be able to impact students, but it’s also a reminder of how I was impacted [in Dr. Koestner’s classes].”
While COVID-19 has brought about many challenges – including fatigue from long hours spent on Zoom classes and meetings – both the Hub and Dr. Koestner have found new opportunities to connect through technology. From Local Wellness Advisors being able to offer virtual Zen-in-Ten mindfulness and relaxation sessions via Facebook Live, to remote one-on-one sessions between clinicians and students, to expanding research possibilities across time zones and busy schedules, Dr. Carsley, Dr. Romano, and Dr. Koestner all agree that finding meaning and purpose during the pandemic is the key to tapping into motivation.
Dr. Romano describes it as coming from “a place of being called to action. We need to be more flexible, to do things we wouldn’t have thought about pre-pandemic, and find out how to embark on your own path of how you make your contribution.”
So how does that look in practice? First, says Dr. Koestner, you have to acknowledge one simple fact: “The pandemic is different for different people; it’s a unique experience. It’s a struggle for us all, but there is diversity in what is especially hard for us.”
We can’t measure our experience, success, or motivation against others’, and challenges and solutions aren’t one-size-fits-all. The experience of a student who has moved away from home, begun the process of individuation and suddenly has to return home will be different from the experience of an introvert or person with social anxiety who might be finding things a little easier during physical distancing, whose experience will be different from a parent who is teleworking and distance learning. Dr. Koestner adds, “It’s a time to be compassionate with ourselves, we just have to get through this. There’s no way to be working with structure all day long.”
He says that, for him, finding meaning throughout the pandemic has come from the realization that “there are other ways of staying in touch with people and collaborating.” For example, Dr. Koestner has used this time to build relationships with community organizations to study the impacts of quarantine on marginalized populations, most notably Montreal’s Black community in the overlapping context of both COVID-19 and the rise in the Black Lives Matter movement. He notes, “I don’t think I would have been doing this if life was like it has always been. Pandemic has spurred me to orient towards communities.”
You can find the Motivation Monday series every Monday on the Student Wellness Hub’s Healthier McGill Facebook and IGTV channels.
