Students at West Side Elementary School in California, with the help of their art teacher, created a telephone hotline to offer cheerful advice during difficult times. In just days, the hotline began getting thousands of calls an hour. The hotline, available in English and Spanish, offers the happy voices of children of different ages sharing positive messages.

Most people agree that with concerns like Covid-19, extreme weather, and the climate crisis, the last years have been stressful.

“To hear the pure joy from kids is extremely comforting in these difficult times,” art teacher Jessica Martin says.

Ms. Martin called the project “Pep Talk”, which later changed to “PepToc” to draw an ad for the hotline. The project had two parts, one the hotline, and the other creating encouraging posters. Along with artist Asherah, she worked with students from kindergarten to sixth grade. Students working on the hotline thought of what they would like to say. When they were ready, Ms. Martin recorded each one. Later, she sorted out the recordings into the different parts of the telephone hotline. For example, pressing 2 results in words of encouragement and life advice. This includes messages like: “The world is a better place with you in it.” and “You are okay!” Pressing 4, you hear the sounds of children laughing — a sound certain to bring a smile to anyone’s face. Other students took part in making encouraging posters to hang up around the town. Many posters had strips of paper that people passing by could tear off and take with them.

Ms. Martin thought the project would attract interest from people near the school. But word of the hotline spread quickly on social media. The hotline has become popular with stressed adults, patients in hospitals, older people in homes, and others to beat stress by hearing the happy voices of children.

Going through life can be very challenging at times. When we were young, no one told us how hard it would be in the future. But here we are. One of the biggest problems of adult life is having self-doubt. It is tiresome and can kill your confidence levels if not controlled from the get-go.

We will all experience self-doubt. That is natural. It happens to us during normal days or whenever we are going to start a new task, or a new relationship, anything new in life will make you self-doubt. This sort of feeling forces you into a dark abyss (深渊) where nothing seems to go right and you might feel like giving up. That is the time to be strong.

There are some people out there that mistake self-doubt for something else. Self-doubt is when you are unsure about one or more parts of yourself. For example, when starting a new job, you might feel inexperienced or might think that you are not fit enough for the job, this is an example of self-doubt.

Self-doubt isn’t all that bad. A low level of self-criticism is actually good for you. It motivates you and pushes you to be better in life, to become greater than yesterday. This type of feeling will push you to work harder and faster than before and will also increase your productivity, but it should be a low level of self-criticism. You don’t want to punish yourself over things that are beyond your control.

In order to be a better version of ourselves, tough love can be a good motivator but we don’t need to become drill sergeants (教官) while doing that. Over-criticizing ourselves actually does more harm than good, and I say this from experience. Overworking and a fear of failure only lead to self-damage.

September is an exciting month in every college freshman’s life. For many, it’s the first time that they’ve left home to live in a new environment. But after the hustle and bustle of a few weeks, excitement gives way to a less enjoyable emotion—homesickness.

Homesickness manifests itself in many ways. You may miss mum’s cooking, your pets, or even your old bed. All this becomes a fond memory of the past. Homesickness can be a bitter feeling for many students, especially when faced with the challenges of settling into an unfamiliar environment.

But remember, you’re not alone. According to a recent BBC article, 70 percent of British college students experience homesickness. In this increasingly globalized world in which people migrate to faraway places for a relationship, education or work, homesickness is a feeling shared by many adults.

Homesickness can have similar symptoms to depression and in extreme cases it can develop into a panic attack. As for the term, homesickness or nostalgia wasn’t invented until the 17th century. It was considered a disorder by a Swiss physician, who attributed soldiers’ mental and physical discomfort to their longing to return home, “nostos” from Greek, and the accompanying pain, “algos”.

Studies in recent years, however, have shown that nostalgia may have some benefits to our mental health. After a decade of surveys and researches, Constantine Sedikides, a US social psychologist, found that nostalgia is what makes us human. He explains that nostalgia can resist loneliness, boredom and anxiety. Therefore, it’s necessary for college students to learn some ways to overcome the uncomfortable feeling.