Students in the Promise Scholars Program learned about maintaining boundaries within their professional and personal life at the BAE: Boundaries Against Everything workshop by Kim Davalos, a Skyline College counselor, on Wednesday, April 10.

BAE: Boundaries Against Everything focused on the topic of maintaining boundaries, not only in romantic relationships, but in school, family, friends, and work, and the importance it plays out on students’s life. Students were encouraged to define what boundaries meant to them personally and to collectively share their opinions.

Kim Davalos shared more information about what is discussed during the workshops.

“I think it is very important for students to learn how to create boundaries because students are working on only developing themselves as people,” Davalos said. ” A part of becoming an adult or becoming self-actualized in what you want for your life not only is in your career or major, but it’s also about what are the types of lifestyles and relationships do you want.”

Davalos put emphasis on self-care and giving back to oneself.

“That means how do you want to treat others, how do you want others to treat you. How much time do you have to give. We talk a lot about time management in college counseling and with our students but to me, a huge part about time management is how do you prioritize boundaries with your relationships, to be able to manage your time,” Davalos said.

BAE: Boundaries Against Everything is part of a workshop series: All About Love— discussing students’ “happiness, well-being and lifelong educational success”—occurs once a month and is open to all Skyline students but is mainly catered for those in the Promise Scholars Program.

“The (Promise Program) is for our incoming students who are on their first year and they don’t have to be right out of high school or non-traditional first-year students at a community college,” Davalos said. “The biggest piece of what our program is known for is that all the students in this program, as long as they are meeting with our counselors, they’re going to their workshops and events, the get tuition, textbooks, and transportation all paid for two years.”

Davalos expressed her surprise when it came to the amount of male attendees in the workshops.

“The best part that I love about this workshops series is that I wasn’t even anticipating was that the majority of the people attending these are young men and they are openly looking to build better relationships in their lives and that’s so interesting that they are open to talking about it and really yearning to find better tools and ways to express themselves and create good relationships not only with partners but with friends and family,” Davalos said.

Students were told to write a letter to someone they wanted to set boundaries with—a family member, a friend, a coworker or boss, or a significant other—and list all the boundaries they wanted to set and end the note with “Love,” as it was not a “breakup” letter but was intended to create a limit.

After the workshop, two Promise Scholars spoke about the limits they implemented within their boundaries.

Ysabelle Nazareno, a psychology major and a Promise Scholar, expressed the difficulty she’s experienced when maintaining boundaries.

“I struggle to maintain boundaries with my time in a daily basis,” Nazareno said. “For example, I would spend too much time on one thing and forget the other. I would spend time with my boyfriend too much and forget my responsibilities or the other way around”

Ellie Balingasa, a radiology tech major and another Promise Scholar shared her experience.

“The major ones are time and school,” Balingasa said. “I procrastinate a lot.”

The All About Love Series will conclude this May with “Revolutionary Act: Self/ Impact on School. This workshop will focus on the success and happiness students can gain from self-prioritization.