you get started in the princeton advisory committee so the princeton youth advisory committee i think it's fair to say that about a year about a year ago none of us knew what it was it wasn't even established as a thing yet in fifteen days it will be i believe when the first notifications went out for applications  applications then they called listen for interviews and i guess it went well enough because sitting here right now so do they all come from just princeton high school or their other high schools involved or is it everybody in the whole state of new jersey how does so when the mayor for sent it out she was looking for qualified high school leaders to start a youth advisory board for the mayor to to make initiatives for the the youth community of princeton so i think about eighty kids maybe  was it was like ninety i think ninety kids sent in applications to be a part of this group and then they narrowed it down to interviews and about color of us were selected exactly told exactly tell us and so every year a new crop of twelve will come in or you guys stay until you graduate so we're replacing the seniors in correct yes so the way that works if you're in the committee you will stay until you crowd to it unless there are extenuating circumstances  and that's just we want to keep we want to keep our a level of no how in the actual group and we want to have that be passed down through generations so that everyone knows what they're doing so know how how what what are some of the requirements to get into the group so there aren't actually any like conquer well the main require the only requirement if i'm correct is that you have to be a resident of princeton and for this coming year you will have to be a rising sophomore to apply ok so how about grades is there is particular grade that you need or you know we're or that's the only thing that they can do yeah so we're actually it's funny you mention that we're actually trying to set up multiple clubs like in in the high school and g w potentially in the future and  to engage in the community make changes cory you know how does how does the meetings work is it once a week twice a week every day is that homework so it all started out once a month and we have found out that that is just simply not enough it's going to go up to twice a month which it doesn't sound like a lot but with all the work in between involved it it's quite a bit ok so just to anyone who's looking to apply it there is a workload and it's expected that all members contribute and it's not just a workload where you're told what to do indeed i think complete that task you really have to be thinking for yourself and actively what you can do to make the process more efficient and what you can do to start something that really matters argentines are for two hours each meeting as john mentioned we're also trying to have like two meetings every month now and the public is open to watching the meetings and like participating and actually encourage that people do come we've been trying to reach out to more people to get them to participate in kind of understand what the process is like so that if they had an idea they'd be able to reach us so now do you move from high school or high school or is it always that one our meetings are always there normally room eight twenty and yeah it's always from seven to nine on a tuesday normally the last tuesday of month great so you guys brought a presentation that up so we are the princeton youth advisory committee and this was just our little report on what we have already done on mental health and noticed throughout our time here there is always high levels of academic achievement at all four schools generally speaking there's an environmental pressure to succeed at these schools and everyone is looking to get ahead and there's kind of a stigma we noticed towards being overwhelmed and there's kind of a stigma against getting help which we found was very that had that had really bad side effects and lastly college is seen by many if not all as the be all end all to high school so with this very stressful environment we found there was a surprising lack of resources or knowledge of resources that existed for the student populous so next slide so we surveyed all four princeton high schools recently and we found these results to be very drastic actually we did a survey on what students found to be the main issues facing them in the community and we found that forty four percent stated that mental health was the big was the big issue and that's considering we had five six categories the second highest you can go to the next slide the second highest was actually twelve percent and that was a community building event so forty four percent that really just that shocked us kind of and it showed that there really was a want to have a change in this community towards mental health of students  help us or if they had any ideas we would like love them to contribute so we ended up going to the friday night live performance at the princeton public library so that was just a teen event i was organized by the teen advisory board and corner house i believe at the princeton public library so just for friday in december they hosted various acapella groups from different high schools so if you're like a lot of kids like one hundred fifty a belief so we were able to like set up a standard we talked about like who we were and we had pamphlets explaining and also like giving out people like us information to get in contact with us and then from there we also did a stress free wall so the idea was just for high schoolers to write down on one post said something that struck them out and then on another posted something that like they did to relieve stress and we made it like a big collage where people could just put put their posters on wherever and the idea was we wanted to see like what like the largest concerns in the stressors where because the survey only kind of touched on the surface hasta like what they thought the problem was but we wanted to get more details and then we also saw that like having the different coping mechanisms could be important in case we wanted to like send out kind of like advice or tips on how to like manage job stress so that was really well we also just like gave  short presentation to the community of students who had gone just explaining who we were and that we were really glad that they were able to harvest their can you go to the next light so this is just a photo of like some of the photos we took  are various people putting up like posted and at the end really hot a lot next liveliest so just like some of the things that it did for us we found out like unsurprisingly that college admissions was a very large stressor for a lot of students that was on top of like also decisions and kind of like the perceptions out like friends or family might have in case they got rejected from a certain school another really important structure had been standardized tests and homework so what we saw was just like a lot of standardized tests are coming up like future and things like that was a big stressor for them and then they were just like the idea of sports and extra curricular cer trying to balance everything also doing homework and maintaining that kind of like academic and like excellence next life  soon i'm going to talk about the future projects that we have planned for the y c please go to the next slide is a site about mental health forums so we've decided that in the spring we would like to host two mental health forms for the community one would be designed to address the parents of the youth of princeton and another would be designed to adjust the students of princeton and here we hope we could bring in some professionals to talk about mental health and some students to share their experiences and then we would be kind of organizing the whole thing as as it went as it went along and pretty much our goal with this isn't really to solve the problem that's a much larger larger larger project but we hope that we can raise awareness awareness of what mental health is why it's important why it can be so why it can be so significant especially a teenager's life and so just recognizing symptoms in yourself in your children and your friends and how to best cope with it and importantly prevention strategies how you can maintain a mental balance in your life of academic and personal challenges while also being in a place a place where you feel that mentally comfortable and safe and then the side that if you already are experiencing some of these symptoms coping mechanisms how to reach out for yourself how to get help for your children how to get how to get help for your friends how you can how you can get through a bad situation mentally and become a stronger person afterwards and then we would also bring in some professionals because we are not psychologists to discuss to discuss this problem with the community and to give an expert opinion that is really really important for an area that is so sensitive as mental health next slide please so another project that we were working on is we wanted to start collaborating with organizations that school could open a gateway to mental health argument one thing we were looking at is a group called peer group at p h s and there are a group of seniors that talk to freshman about assimilating into high school so they deal with friendships relationships academic stress just kind of assimilating into the high school environment and we thought this would be a really good opportunity to start talking about mental health and adjusting the problem early so we looked into that and we found out that the superintendent p h s i actually already looking to re evaluate the curriculum as well as a health care here that p h s and adds and add some material about mental health so we got in contact with him and hopefully we'll be working very closely with him in giving our thoughts and opinions on what might be for the students at p h s and then also groups that are similar to that is called teen patti which is a group of juniors at p h s who teach sexual education to the freshman and just addressing some problems and some stigmas that are associated with  do you guys go through that pressure every day do you feel the pressure i think as a second semester senior who's already gotten in the college no but  the day before i got my acceptance letter i was not completely there and i think for most kids at least there's definitely always this sense of stress and what's coming next different for a school i think to some extent we all either feel that pressure or we recognize that pressure and i don't think it's just i don't think it's always just the academic rigor at the school it's also just environmental factors that you know it teenagers just being a teenager is just in general like a pretty it can be a pretty rough time to go through and i think that there are a lot of different ways that people can  can can feel like a negative environment that's pretty amazing that you guys are teenagers and you're ready understand that the the issues of teenagers is always you know it's not just schooling but it's everything in compassing with that because you're going through you know finding boys or girls for boyfriends or girlfriends you're going through you know adolescence of acne and all of that that goes on right plus then you have school then you have sports you have clubs that's all bombarded right onto you and then you're looking for help from mom and dad you're looking from help from the school and they're saying well now you have to pick a college for the next four years right  and that's what really starts to put a burden on you because you're you're dealing with all of that plus you're looking for a college that you don't even know what's out there right because there's well over three thousand colleges out there and trying to find one that fits you both academically as well as you know extracurricular activities that are going on at the school is difficult so what what what do you feel is the correct way to help from parents guidance counselors teachers coaches what what what do you feel they can do to help you know people like your to go to the next level so one thing that i've noticed is are people like shawn mentioned see colleges being like the end all be all the problem with that kind of mentality is all you can do and achieve many things without having gone to like harvard princeton yell those kind of name brand schools and i think that i think that parents and we got in concert should definitely try to get students to see like the success stories of people who didn't go to those schools and show that like there is a reality that is different from like what we perceive as like going to like ivy league and like the only way to be successful in life so just like kind of changing that kind of like the mindset that's come in pretty ingrained in princeton high schools schools that would probably help a lot and just along with that i think that a lot of students have this idea that like the  ends justify the means that they'll do whatever it takes to get into that college i think that students really have to be aware of what they're sacrificing in why they're sacrificing it like to harvard harvard humphrey and there are a lot of great great opportunities there but is that is that is best suited for you like is that where you is at the career path that you want to follow follow in life is that healthy for you and just to get students to know that  academics don't come before their health their their health and their comfort and their safety is more important you know one last thing i think the most the most comforting thing to hear as a high schooler in this town is  i have one really good really great teacher that he would always tell us in in three years in four years you will be fine and you will always find a way you know you're smart you're you're always there and you're all capable and you will be where you're supposed to be and you'll be happy and i think with all those thoughts of college applications and s a t s and a c t's and you constantly think you're going to fail hearing that guiding voice saying it's all going to be ok that really that really sticks with you because you have students at the high school level that don't go to college you have students that go to community college so there's a lot of different paths that every student can take you know some families don't have fifty sixty seventy thousand dollars a year to go send their kids off to princeton or harvard or yale or something right so you know all the schools look more attractive because they fit in the family budget as well so that's that's another avenue you know and  did that come up in your survey family's situations of finance we were thinking about initiatives to help low income students but we did not hear a lot of responses regarding that know it probably is an issue you know and i would imagine that it would fall under the umbrella of just like college admissions just because like i feel like students are aware of the fact that there could be a large financial burden like placed on their entire families they go to a certain college and i'm sure that also influences like like the application for scholarships like if they don't get those that's probably a stressor because it's like hello forward attending college without that kind of financial backing and that that comes into effect with the students themselves having good enough grades to get merit scholarships of some sort or good enough extracurricular activities like a sport or dance or theater or something like that where they can get money at the college level to do that so maybe a lot of the extra curricular activities might be something that you want to look into as well because that's a big thing at the college level is to have those type of activities you know to do you see that as well yeah i think we see that yaks are curry killers we found a lot of people to them that's what really gets them through the day you know they might have a bad day they might get a f on a test whatever but at the end of the day they can go out on the lacrosse field or soccer field and and deal with it and i think especially if that can affect their future and if that can put them a step ahead then and that's in his own way of thinking in the studio for twenty hours a week and it's a lot of commitment i think that it's just a totally different environment in to be in to be able to have to have that in the fact that i'm fortunate enough to have that make  big difference in how i feel about myself to me to have thought i don't do any sports but yeah actually talking layers are definitely like my way of like enjoying the things i'm good out when it comes i could i mix i feel like i have to take certain classes in order to meet like a certain minimum so that means i like some of the classes i don't do as well and i'm not like that and i don't feel like i'm very competent or like at the at the top and like that sometimes an expectation and it makes me feel bad the most classes like extracurriculars you have that choice of like well cause you want to do so for me like debate or like reading for the newspaper there are really great things for me because there's such a nice community there of just like people who want to be there just like with you they're very advisory council community so it's like a that that was i believe that was a part of the survey so and in the future we will definitely look to volunteering within the community and definitely improving the community because the best way to improve the lives of youth in princeton is by building up the community and yeah and then everyone benefits and the other thoughts  i think sean mentioned it pretty much so we're coming to the end of our show and usually what i asked my guess is what advice do you want to give to the moms and dads the high schoolers that are out there what advice do you want to give to them sure so my biggest my biggest piece of advice would be don't worry as much about it as you think you should worrying about it and i'm not saying disregard it but i'm saying don't constantly think you're going to fail it's going to be alright you will wind up for you're supposed to be yeah i think  technical i would say in trying to find like the right activities for you to do i would use freshman year as kind of like join as many clubs as you can just like get a feel for what they're like and then software junior senior year you should really narrow down and just like do the things that you enjoy because you're doing them like voluntarily so definitely enjoy the things that you do a little less technical i would say for the kids out there take care of yourself first it doesn't matter if like you don't have a mental illness or if you're not like you or if you don't feel like you're struggling that much don't don't push it aside and say it's ok i just gotta push through this don't belittle your problems really take take care of yourself take a break when you need to  don't take that one extra a p that's going to like boost your resume or whatever if you don't feel like you can manage it i think just take that mental health day when you need it take take breaks go out with your friends do things that make you happy because