COLUMN: Students are ready to snap
It is that time of year again when stress-outs, freak-outs, break-outs and pure emotional explosions occur. People who seem to be calm and collected snap and become berserko over the teeniest things because of the big impending things that loomingly threaten to crush them.
What big things? Oh, you know, all of those end-of-the-year projects and examinations and obligations and unfulfilled wishes. Where did all the time go? What the flipper have I been doing all semester? We realize that a copious amount of work and play must be shoved impossibly into the last few weeks of school, so we become nervously excited, spastic and precarious. Precarious, because at any given moment, we might pop our tops from the sweltering pressures of academic survival.
Stressed-out people are no good. It is no fun to be around stressed-out students because their edgy behavior affects everyone and everything within close proximity. The air becomes thick with anxiety. When I chat with a complaining, worrying individual, no matter how hard I try to maintain tranquility and optimism, I start to hyperventilate because I begin to focus on all of my own hurdles. Outwardly-expressed stress and self-centeredness strongly encourages the hidden, inward stresses of other sleep-deprived souls. If you come into contact with a stressed-out person, you can do any of the following three things:
1. Leave. If someone starts ranting and raving and quaking on the floor with uncontrollable agitation, for your own personal health and sanity, leave. Remove yourself from the situation as quickly as possible. This is an especially recommended option for those that are on the brink of breakdown themselves. Go to a quiet place. Eat a banana. Do yoga. Walk into the cemetery, sit, breathe deeply and concentrate on little steps and larger perspectives. Ignore the fact that the freaker-outer entered your life at all.
2. Give words of sympathy and encouragement. If you are a really noble person, you might decide to stay and comfort the beleaguered victim of stress. Hear the individual out, nod your head with support at appropriate places, express how pathetically sorry you are for their trials, tell them how great and capable they are, and then change the subject. Start talking about how the Navajo language was used as code during World War II. Or something.
3. Execute tried and true therapeutic tactics. I do not mean to be prideful, but I have encountered innumerable amounts of steeply intense situations in my infernally busy life. Some I have handled better than others, but I am basically a pro at dealing with them. I shall share with you some of my most successful strategies. Feel free to share or use them yourself.
3a. Write a list of all the things you have to do and cross off each item with triumphant glee once it has been conquered. Crossing off days in planners also works wonders.
3b. Every time you get an icky feeling, pretend to grab it in the air and fling it away as you chant viciously, “Icky feeling gone!” Never allow it to stay.
3c. Blow bubbles. (This does not count blowing them in the Spectrum, which is not allowed and will only give you additional stress from suspicious ushers with eagle vision.)
3d. Walk through campus, stop suddenly and scream into the howling canyon winds, “Bring it on!”
3e. Find a buddy and exchange back/neck massages.
3f. Decide at the beginning of a particularly troublesome day that it will be the best day ever. As life throws spit wads at you, exclaim eagerly, “I am sooo lucky!” This phrase, when used, might be semi-sarcastic, but having a farciful, cheery attitude when life rots is hilarious and should make you laugh. And laughter, straight from the gut, pure laughter that streams from the eyes, helps diminish stress best out of any the aforementioned methods.
Melissa Condie is a junior majoring in music education. Comments can be sent to m.condie@aggiemail.usu.edu.