Stresstastic

As a twenty-one year old finishing up my last fall semester of my last year of college, I am constantly stressed. So stressed in fact that I haven't blogged in a few days. My apologies, I had work, and tests, and speeches, and tons of other excuses I won't bore you with. But mainly I was working on a paper called "Societal Perception vs. Self Perception in Buchi Emecheta’s Second Class Citizen and Claire De Duras’s Ourika". Doesn't that just sound stressful? Well, it was. BUT 5,082 words and three days later, its finished.

While I was working on this beast of a paper I did a bit of dictionary.com referencing. In between looking up fun words like coquettishness (a woman who flirts light heartedly with a man to win his affections), I procrastinated by looking up stress. Here's what dictionary.com says in terms of feeling stressed:

Stress [stres], Noun
1.The physical pressure, pull, or other force exerted on one thing by another; strain
2.Physical, mental, or emotional strain or tension.

If I was writing a dictionary, I would define stress like this:

Stress[stres], noun
1.The overwhelming desire to be seven years old again.

What seven year old is stressed? I really think that definition captures the essence that is stress. Recess, Lunchables, piggy-back rides, diaramas... all stress free. In my mind, being stressed is being the opposite of a seven year old. But as I don't currently have a time machine I deal with my stress in other ways...

Mainly procrastination (I dictionaried stress, come on). If I can push the stress back a week, a day, a couple of hours, I will at all costs. YouTubing and Facebooking is great for this. As is addictinggames.com (I have to say it really is addicting). Looking at celebrity playlists on itunes and singing Dolly Parton songs, are all great for procrastinating. But procrastinating stress isn't REALLY dealing with it.

So then I move to stress-eating. In the last week or so I have eaten my body weight in junk food. I have eaten burritos, cheetos, peanut m&ms, oreos, bagels(plural), fries, mashed potatoes, about a gallon of coke, two gallons of coffee, marshmellows... the list could go on for pages, but I wouldn't want to embarrass myself would I?

When I went on my Page Six interview last week, they asked me how I would deal with a stressful situation. I didn't mention the junk food or the kittens I watched on youtube, but I did tell her I made a timeline. In my mind my time line usually involves crying, calling my mom, complaining on to anyone who isn't away on aim, and then dividing up the remaining time into how many tasks I have to do. It's very effective.

So thats how I deal with stress but then there's the effects of stress. One of my roommates gets irritable and grumpy and the other gets playful and chatty. Me? I get sick. Insomnia, sinus infections, cold-sweats, I lose my voice and get lock jaw... my body pretty much shuts down on me. It could be that my diet is lacking vitamin C or the fact that hygiene doesn't really fit into my time chart, I don't really know. What I do know is that come Tuesday at 11:20 I will be completely stress free for six whole days and I can't wait.