RISE With Alumni: Kenneth Vargas & Emily Shaw

Pepperdine alumni Kenneth Vargas, RISE Podcast Producer, and Emily Shaw, RISE Program Specialist, sit around the RISE Roundtable to reflect on their resilience journeys at Pepperdine and post-grade and share some tips and insights they learned along the way.

We also hear from three more Pepperdine alumni, who each share what has supported their resilience throughout their college career and postgraduate experience: R.J. Wicks, Allie McMullen, and Devin Cooke.

Links:

• YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/@PepperdineRISE-fb2vz 
• Website: www.pepperdine.edu/rise/
• Instagram: @pepperdinerise
• Recommend a guest: https://forms.gle/HztkVNgrW85bvvd1A 

In this episode, we discuss the following:

• 5:46 Kenny shares how he optimized his limited time as a student at Pepperdine
• 9:42 Emily talks about how she thought about the time management building block of the life skills dimension while she was a student
• 11:12 Having a growth mindset and learning mentality when taking on new opportunities as students
• 12:17 Trying to operate from a mindset of gratitude rather than perfectionism
• 14:43 Reflecting on our relationships with our parents and loved ones
• 20:49 Being curious about and having empathy toward our parents and people we've known for a long time
• 23:06 Research that shows just how important relationships are for one's well-being and resilience
• 27:30 Prioritizing our physical resilience and why that's important
• 28:45 How to overcome mood changes when it comes to taking care of our physical resilience
• 30:56 The importance of time management as a life skill
• 33:49 Embracing creativity and nature as a resilience practice
• 39:12 Pepperdine's motto "Freely ye received, freely give"