The UAB Department of Neurosurgery is spotlighting staff to focus on the importance of hobbies for stress relief, wellness and self-care.
The goal of the series is to connect individuals across the department by highlighting their hobbies as they relate to mental, physical, emotional, intellectual, spiritual, environmental, social and financial wellness.
 
Jennifer Lancaster is the administrative project specialist in the Neurosurgery Chair Office. She started at UAB in 2017 in the neurosurgery department’s Office of Laboratory Research as a research faculty administrative assistant. In 2019, she was promoted to the chair administrative team as the business officer’s administrative assistant.  In 2020, Jennifer moved to the administrative associate for the executive administrator. In  2021, Jennifer was promoted to her current role of project specialist where her focus is to prepare departmental reports and meeting presentations, manage faculty recruitment itineraries and schedules, as well as other special projects that arise. Her task is to make others “do their homework.” Prior to her start at UAB, she was an administrative assistant for religious life at Birmingham Southern College. She and her husband of 18 years, Bruce, have four dogs.
 
What hobby do you currently focus on in your downtime?   
I have a few hobbies. I am devoted to my dogs and like to take them on walks and spend time playing with them. I also dabble in making soap, cake decorating, crochet, felt crafting and recently started a YouTube channel. The hobby I spend the most time on is Dungeons & Dragons (DND), a role-playing game. My husband and I play every weekend in two groups that meet every Sunday or alternating Saturdays. The age range of the role players is the mid-20s to mid-50s. My husband and I are the oldest members. They often refer to us as the “mom and dad” of the group and we’ve received Mother’s and Father’s Day gifts from one of the members. As we don’t have children of our own, this means a lot to us. I enjoy the role-playing game because I can create fanciful characters that do fun and silly things. My favorite character class to play is a bard. 
 
What inspired you to explore this hobby?
I started playing DND in 2016 because of my husband. He grew up playing it, but as he and his friends aged, his group dispersed.  A game shop opened in our area and he quickly joined a group there. I didn’t realize how many hours they would play, so in the interest of not sitting at home alone, I started to join him. Our group from the game shop gelled and we started meeting in our homes instead of the shop, with our home becoming the default meeting place. I enjoy hosting the group in our home the most and love to make food for game nights. One evening after some of the players had gone home, I asked a younger player if he wanted anything else to eat and he started to get up to make himself food, but my husband told him, “let her make you a sandwich, it makes her happy.”  And, it’s true.

Have you noticed a change in your well-being since beginning this hobby and how does that translate into your work?  
Not only is the game fun and gives me something to look forward to, but we have become friends with the groups. We have a group chat that we use during the week and they are our first phone call for events in our lives. We have come to depend on them as friends and not just players in the group. We are planning a trip soon to a lake house for a full weekend of non-stop DND.
 
What are you most proud of?  
One of the coolest things I’ve done is make a DND cake for my husband’s birthday. If you search “DND birthday cake” in Google, then the cake I made will show up in the search engine. I ordered dice petit-fours to go along with the cake I made.