Kate Inman is utilizing her role as the student leader of the Friends R Family Club for her Senior Project to focus on the mental health of JC students.

She said, “I chose this for my Senior Project because I have struggled a lot with my mental health, and I am finally in the place to be able to help others with theirs. I’ve realized that bringing others happiness is what brings me the most happiness.”
Throughout the year, Kate plans to have events every month. To kick off the year, she organized an event to make posters to put around the school. Then the Friends R Family Club celebrated World Mental Health Day by putting sticky notes on all of the lockers and getting teachers to take five to 10 minutes of class to do a mindful activity.
She explained, “Through my own experience and the start of my project implementation, I have learned how powerful small acts of kindness can be. Something as simple as asking someone how they are doing can turn their whole day around. When I put the sticky notes on the lockers for everyone, I was told by a friend that someone said how they were struggling, and they really needed that. That is what it is all about.”
This project has already affected Kate “so much” because she knows that she is “making a difference in one person’s life.” She said, “I am so grateful to be in the place in my life where I am comfortable with speaking about mental health and working to break the stigma.”
Kate plans to major in psychology and eventually work in the mental health field, so “this project is such a wonderful way for [me] to start impacting people’s lives.”
She said, “So far this project has confirmed for me that I have the power to help others’ mental health and that I want to spend my life doing that.”
So far Kate’s project “has been going very smoothly.” She has learned how important planning is for the success of her project.
She said, “As long as I keep planning everything out ahead of time, I think it’ll all go really well, and I will be very proud of the end result.”
Kate predicts her biggest challenge will be making the school-wide assembly “hit every area” that she is going for.
She explained how she remembers as a freshman, JC had a mental health assembly, but she didn’t think it helped her at all.
She said, “My biggest challenge will be getting through to the people who don’t realize they need help or just don’t want it. It is hard to get through to everyone, especially because I know what it is like to be in the audience of one of these assemblies, but I am going to try to incorporate some different approaches because we all respond to things differently.”
The response to her project so far has been “very positive.” She has gotten “so much great feedback from teachers and students.
She said, “Of course, I assume there are the people who think the posters and sticky notes around the school are stupid, but my goal is just to impact one person. If I can make one of my classmates have a better day, then I have succeeded.”
Kate’s next event will be a yoga class on November 3. The rest of the events are still up in the air, but she will “definitely” be organizing a school-wide assembly sometime in February or March.