MAPLES is complete

For the last 8 weeks, I’ve been involved in a project ran by Andrea Kusec at The University of Cambridge.  MAPLES: Mood And Participation Leisure Study is ran by the Cognition and Brain Sciences Unit. Using webcam meetings, myself, Andrea and a group of other people who have Acquired Brain Injuries met once a week. We took part in a really interesting series of sessions, involving discussions, presentations, pastelling artwork and quizzes.

These sessions have now come to an end. We polished the sessions off with a pub quiz (we did pretty good as a group- we were offered multiple choice answers and submitted the most popular choice) and finally a codebreaking exercise (none of us could quite get our heads around it, so we ended the session with a discussion). I’ve also met with one of Ms Kusec’s colleagues to give some feedback on the session.

I really enjoyed the meetings. It was good to feel part of a community of people who had similar experiences to mine, who knew what it was like to have to struggle with concentration, tiredness, anxieties and ‘fitting in.’ But also, we were a group of people who were doing something about it- learning skills, planning time, expressing ourselves, and most importantly, learning from each other.

Although our sessions have finished, Ms Kusec finishes the project in September 2021. I’m looking forward to seeing the final outcome.