![\"\"](\"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/06\/Staff_Spring_Assembly2_0157.jpg\" "\\"The")
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\n\tBy MARTY LEVINE<\/p>\n
\n\tYou can take charge of your own stress levels \u2014 and of how and whether you use AI.<\/p>\n
\n\tThose were the twin messages of Staff Council\u2019s annual professional development gathering, Spring Assembly, on May 27, under the theme \u201cNavigating Change: Staying Grounded and Adapting in an Ever-Evolving Workplace.\u201d<\/p>\n
\n\t\u201cChange is not what we think it is,\u201d said Suzie Bode, a UPMC MyHealth@Work health coach who used the first half of the gathering to speak about steps to lessen the impact of stress. \u201cIt is the small little things we do every day. It is creating tools for ourselves.\u201d Those tools can be anything from exercising to gardening, but Bode recommends the easiest one to get started: deep breathing.<\/p>\n
\n\t\u201cI really do believe that change is possible for every single person on the planet,\u201d she said, if each person has the right support and the right tools.<\/p>\n
\n\t\u201cWe can do it to ourselves as much as the world can do it to us,\u201d Bode cautioned about the cause of stress. \u201cIt is a type of energy inside our bodies, and energy cannot be destroyed; it can only change form. It cannot just go away. It has to have an outlet.\u201d<\/p>\n
\n\tStress can have many physical, emotional, behavioral and mental symptoms, from pains and sleep disturbance to chronic illness; from sadness to anger; from road rage to wanting to be alone; from forgetfulness to feeling uncreative. \u201cSuper annoyed \u2014 that is my favorite,\u201d she said of her own experience. \u201cOr you find yourself just feeling stuck in worry. Are you critical of others or of yourself?\u201d<\/p>\n
\n\tScrolling on social media should also be on the list of stress symptoms, she said, along with endlessly checking the news. \u201cSame thing with change in the workplace \u2014 you\u2019re hoping that it will just settle down.\u201d<\/p>\n
\n\tDeep breathing, she explained, is one quick \u201csecret weapon for staying relaxed. This is the easiest one for every single human to do, and it is accessible. It is not going to resolve your problem but it changes the level at which you can manage the issue.\u201d<\/p>\n
\n\tThe practice is simple: Place one hand over your diaphragm and your other hand over your heart, to help you feel your heartbeat and how your body moves as you take a deep breath. If your chest is rising more than your stomach, try breathing more from your diaphragm area, she suggested.<\/p>\n
\n\t\u201cIf you need to go and lock yourself in the bathroom and take 30 seconds and take five breaths, and let that belly hand move, I can guarantee… that you will be able to manage that challenge in front of you a little bit differently.\u201d Work, family and political changes \u2014 even tech changes such as AI \u2014 can feel \u201cout of our control, but I can control my breath.\u201d<\/p>\n
\n\tAll that stress \u201cenergy\u201d inside you may need a longer-term outlet, Bode said. Re-engaging with an old interest or taking up a new one \u2014 particularly one that involves social contacts \u2014 can improve our health. \u201cThose who feel disconnected have a higher risk of stress, anxiety and depression,\u201d she noted.<\/p>\n
\n\tMake a plan for 14 to 30 days from now, she said, to take up such activities, she suggested: \u201cTake that next step and make a plan \u2014 a plan A, B and C, and have each plan be a little easier to do\u201d than the previous one, so that there won\u2019t be any notion of failure, should plan A become impossible.<\/p>\n
\tWith AI, you\u2019re still the expert<\/p>\n
\n\tMaking AI work for you, and putting aside the stress of using this new tech development, were twin themes of the second half of Spring Assembly.<\/p>\n
\n\tVictoria Lancaster, assistant vice chancellor for operational excellence (and administrator of Pitt\u2019s online AI community of practice), led a panel discussion of Pitt staff who use AI, focused on \u201cfears, concerns and workplace impacts\u201d of the new tech. Even the tech expert on the panel admitted that adjusting to AI can be hard.<\/p>\n
\n\t\u201cThis is new to everybody; it was actually hard\u201d to start using usefully, said Daniel McGaughey on the employee information staff of Pitt Digital. \u201cI had to absorb a lot of knowledge very fast. Now all of us can do it. It\u2019s pretty fun for us.\u201d<\/p>\n
\n\t\u201cIt\u2019s hard to get started on any AI platform,\u201d said Sarah McMullen of Philanthropic and Alumni Engagement (who is also Staff Council\u2019s vice president of public relations): \u201cWhat do you use it for and what don\u2019t you use it for?\u201d She has learned to approach AI use with a very specific task in mind. And she was helped by more experienced AI users who showed her AI\u2019s possibilities.<\/p>\n
\n\tJordan Hoover, director of executive administrative operations for Facilities Management (and chair of Staff Council\u2019s Operations Committee), said he was very skeptical early on that AI would be of any help in his work. But now, when solving \u201cproblems on the fly\u201d and faced with a very specific task, he has found it useful to ask AI: \u201cHow can I do it faster? How can I do it better? What is the next thing I can do?\u201d<\/p>\n
\n\tLancaster also was initially skeptical of AI\u2019s utility for her work, so employed it to help redesign her home kitchen first. But when Pitt adopted Claude AI, she found it to be \u201ca great learning tool. I use Claude all the time to learn something.\u201d<\/p>\n
\n\tShe also realized that Claude can help solve problems it encounters in its own work, although she admits, \u201csometimes Claude is having a bad day.\u201d She asked the panelists what Claude had done for them that they didn\u2019t know how to do themselves.<\/p>\n
\n\tMcGaughey found out that Claude could splice videos together \u2014 a skill he did not yet possess \u2014 while McMullen was surprised to see AI suggest and construct a dashboard to present information that she needed to organize. Once, seeing an error message in a Claude-produced item, she asked the program, \u201cWhat do you suggest? How can we get around this?\u201d and it proposed a solution. \u201cSometimes they will suggest another platform too,\u201d she said.<\/p>\n
\n\t\u201cI didn\u2019t have an a-ha moment\u201d in moving from AI skeptic to user, Hoover said. \u201cI just had an ease-into-a-ha. With Claude I realized there was another way of doing it.\u201d He too was surprised to see his usual spreadsheets and Word documents presented as a dashboard by Claude. The inquiry that produced such a result was simply: \u201cHow can we make this more interesting?\u201d For further use of AI, Hoover realized he might once have approached it for help with one task, but when he began to ask, \u201cWhat else can I do, that is where the time saving took place.\u201d<\/p>\n
\n\tDaniel McGaughey recalled a job he held decades ago, for a company where half the computer staff was writing mainframe computer programs and maintaining them, while the other half \u2014 the younger bunch \u2014 were focused on new tech. Google had just arrived, but the mainframe crew still had books on their desks \u2014 manuals for writing Cobol programs. \u201cIt took a long time for people to retrain that muscle to put a question into Google rather than looking at the index of the book,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n
\n\t\u201cAI is not a search engine. It is a conversation,\u201d Lancaster said \u2014 one in which the user keeps asking questions and refining AI\u2019s answers.\u201d<\/p>\n
\n\t\u201cTake something in your job that takes a lot of your time but not a lot of your expertise,\u201d Hoover suggested, \u201cand try that\u201d with AI\u2019s help.<\/p>\n
\n\tMcMullen observed that AI, for instance, cannot yet design usable crochet patterns, suggesting impossibilities that people who crochet can spot right away. \u201cYou\u2019re the expert,\u201d she said.<\/p>\n
\n\t\u201cYou are more important than AI,\u201d McGaughey added. \u201cWe do not want to race ahead with these technologies to the detriment of people.\u201d<\/p>\n
\n\tMarty Levine is a staff writer for the University Times. Reach him at martyl@pitt.edu<\/a> or 412-758-4859.<\/p>\n \n\t\u00a0<\/p>\n \n\tHave a story idea or news to share? Share<\/a> it with the University Times.<\/p>\n