As a middle school student, Molly Howland experienced social anxiety that often made her feel isolated from everyone else.
She said she found relief sharing her feelings with those she trusted.
“My anxiety got better when I started talking to people about it,” said Howland, a fourth-year neuroscience student.
Drawing from these experiences, Howland founded the UCLA chapter of Spill (Supporting Peers in Laid-back Listening) – an organization that tries to support college students by giving them an outlet to share their problems with a stranger – in 2012.
Through Spill, college students can seek peer life advice anonymously, said Heidi Allstop, who founded the organization’s national branch.
Mostly, Spill is a place for students to get advice for everyday problems: roommate disagreements, romantic relationship tension and school stress, Allstop said.
College students register for an account using their university email to verify that they are students, but the problems they submit – called “spills” – are completely anonymous, Allstop said. Students can either spill or respond to a spill through the Spill website. After spilling, students can indicate whether they want a response from someone from their own campus or from another school, Howland said.
“I heard about (Spill) through a friend at UC Berkeley and thought it was a great idea,” Howland said.
Spill responders are trained online through the website, Howland said.
For spills that concern suicide or harm to others, responders can break confidentiality of the spiller and notify authorities, Allstop said.
Responders can indicate which kinds of problems they feel comfortable advising, Allstop said. The problem is read within five minutes, then sent out to appropriate responders from the same campus as the spiller within 10 minutes. The spiller gets between six and eight responses within 24 hours, Allstop said.
Tiffany Huey, a fourth-year sociology student and the vice president of finance for Spill’s UCLA chapter, said Spill at UCLA is made up of people from all different majors and backgrounds. With the wide variety of responders comes a large range of spills as well.
So far, UCLA’s chapter has received 108 spills from UCLA students, and numerous others from campuses across the country.
Eleanor Kim, a second-year biology student, said she joined the club at UCLA as a responder last quarter after learning about it on BruinWalk.
She said she has particularly found it challenging to respond to some sensitive spills, such as those involving abuse issues.
But, she said, she has learned that “spillers” are not necessarily looking for expert advice.
Rather, they are searching for words of encouragement and the knowledge that someone is listening, she said.
To make the club more of an interactive experience for its members – 140 in total at UCLA – Howland said she arranges for guest speakers from places such as eating disorder clinics to speak about different issues, and creates responders’ writing workshops. One time, the club invited a NASA employee to give advice to members on how to reduce stress, based on experience from working a stressful job.
At Spill’s semi-quarterly group meetings, members sometimes share personal stories. At the group’s most recent meeting, one member spoke about her experience with sexual assault, Howland said.
Like Howland, many of the responders said they were inspired by their own stories to help others enduring similar hardships.
Huey joined the club last year. As a new transfer to UCLA, the club seemed like a way to make the school feel smaller, Huey said. Huey said it was difficult to know what to say to a spiller who struggled with his or her sexuality, because she had never been in that situation before. Annie Li, a fourth-year business economics student, had not heard of the site, but said she thought it was a good way for people to talk to someone anonymously.
Other students said they were skeptical of Spill’s ability to solve problems.
Tim Lui, a third-year molecular, cellular and developmental biology student, said he thought that Spill had a supportive element but did not think Spill could help people in the long term.
“The site seems like a temporary fix,” Lui said.
Although responding can be difficult, Huey said she has found that many spillers look for support rather than advice.
“Spill has taught me that there are even strangers out there who care about you,” Huey said.
Howland said she has learned through Spill that many people want to talk about issues that affect college students every day, which she hopes will help the group expand on campus.
“We just want people to know they are not alone,” Howland said.
Email Levin at ylevin@media.ucla.edu