Drew Davis, Editor-in-Chief
@ddaviscourant
Dear Stressed Drew,
I am not going to tell you to take a deep breath or to relax, because when has that done anything except annoy you or make you even more stressed. Having people tell you that forces you to acknowledge your stress, and acknowledging it makes it seem so much more real and frustrating. However, once you look it in the eyes, the problem can seem much smaller.
For everyone, this time of year is very busy, making it stressful. Hence why there have been so many Advisory periods dedicated to talking about stress. When you had to write down what your stresses were on a piece of paper in advisory you wrote: “staying balanced”. You didn’t even think about it that much, but then your teacher made a comment about how that is an interesting thing to be stressed over because typically people use balance to fight stress. That comment made me think. Were you so stressed that you were stressing about being stressed? The startling thing was, I do think you let it get to that point.
The stress of “staying balanced” comes from knowing that you need to stay level-headed, but not being able to do so. I was stressed not only about being stressed, but about not being stressed. What I mean is this: when you were making to-do lists of all the essays and school work you had to complete, you also made a list of things you would do to reward yourself after. You told yourself things like “next weekend I will go to the apple orchard” or even things as simple as “next weekend I will let myself watch an episode of my favorite show”. However, these things never got done and your “reward” to-do list kept getting longer.
Recently, I finally took some time for myself. I spent Sunday afternoon with our Mom and we went to brunch in Westport. You finally got to talk to your family again instead of icing them out to crank out another math problem set. It was through my food coma fog on Sunday afternoon that I found clarity.
You are so worried about being productive and not procrastinating, but in reality you are procrastinating because you are putting off your well-being and happiness. You keep pushing all these things off that you really want to do, and they keep building up because you are not doing them. Maybe a trip to the apple orchard is exactly what you need to clear your mind and feel like you are living instead of feeling trapped in a cycle of monotonous tasks. You can afford to spend 30 minutes talking to your family because it not only will give you a much deserved break that you will come back refreshed from, but it will help your quality of life. You only have one senior year, and I do not want a future version of myself to write me a letter and tell me that I should not have waited until second semester to enjoy it.
Everyone is stressed, but that is not a word that should define you, it should only be a temporary state that incurs incentive, not dread. So, do not take a deep breath, take many. Go somewhere outside of your desk and do something you will have a distinct memory of instead of spending another night that will be blurred into a phase of your life where all you remember is slumping over a desk.
Take time for yourself, seriously.
Best of luck,
Less Stressed Drew
