Long Beach City College students learned the importance of forgiveness at LAC where they gathered together at the Student Health department to learn the causes and the consequences of anger.
Student Mental Health Services has hosted an anger and forgiveness workshop apart of their mental health workshop schedule. Through the workshops, they want to create awareness to help students manage their anger and learn the importance of forgiveness.
Karina Anderson lead the anger and forgiveness workshop and has worked at LBCC for several years. Her goal is to keep students focused and in school.
“I come to work every day with one goal make students stronger and leave their past behind,” Anderson said.
“Our goal is simple, we want students to engage in school. We provide this extraordinary workshops so they can become better and better.”
According to the college association, LBCC is one of the few colleges that helps students with their issues. The main focus of each workshop is to provide quality support to students.
During the workshop, Anderson asked students about their families, friends and pets. She wanted to see how students responded when asked about their relatives.
“Before coming to this workshop I argued with my husband. I said things I shouldn’t have said. We are complicated,” said Marina Lopez.
Marina Lopez, a student and a mother of two, still attended the event nevertheless the anger toward her husband.
“My husband and I fight almost every day. I don’t know if he loves me. A few months later he talked bad about my parents and I didn’t like the things he said,” Lopez shared.
For reasons like these, LBCC is offering varying mental health workshops almost every week so that students can learn to approach their issues in a healthy way.
Anderson explained how students could be happy and do well at school if they learn to forgive people.
Near the end of the workshop, Luis Montesillo raised his hand to share his opinion about anger and forgiveness.
“Now I know what I should do. It’s hard not to be mad, especially when your parents don’t support you. They don’t want me to be at school. When I graduated from high school, my dad wanted me to work with him,”
“Clearly, he didn’t want me to go to college. I don’t talk to him. I have anger in my heart I guess,” Montesillo shared.
After the event Anderson gave her opinions about anger.
“I suffered from these issues too. I wasn’t the perfect student. I had problems with my friends and parents. One day I was on my bed thinking why I could not get my transfer to the university. I realized that I was doing badly at school because I didn’t talk to my parents or friends, so I started working on that. I basically forgave people for all the fights that I had with them,” Anderson said.