Issues of Stress

Sept 1, 2004

I am downright proud of myself; it is midnight, my homework is done, and I'm still awake! And that is literally an amazing thing! Sleep deprivation has been the bane of my existence since I've been back in school. I usually get up at 5:30 a.m. to make sure I am in the parking lot at Western by 7:00 a.m. If I don't, I may/may not get a parking space. I sit in my car and study until 7:30, then I make my way up to the Math building, aka Kris's Torture Chamber.

By the time I have gone to school and then put in 6-8 hours at work, it is usually nine or ten o'clock at night before I can sit down to do my homework. There is usually a good hour and a half's worth of Math homework to do every night.... minimum (!), plus anything else I may have for any other class. So I'll start the homework....and boom... I'm asleep. I wake up with my head in all sorts of positions, my light still on-- sometimes still sitting in my chair. Monday night was absolutely miserable. I had scads of Math to do, and I felt like I was paralyzed with sleepiness. I had a Math quiz to study for too and just couldn't do it. I tried to wake up extra early the next morning so I would have time to finish it. I finished it, but just barely. I was really stressed out about it and I once again froze up on the quiz.

These quizzes are nerve-wracking. Quiz one was awful too. I did not have a good feeling about it at all. When I got quiz 1 back on Monday, I looked at it and literally spazzed out. The grade was 3/15. There was just as much red on the paper as any other color. Upon closer examination, I realized I had the wrong paper. There is a Christine, a Crystal, a Kris, and a Chris in the class, and because she doesn't ever talk clearly enough to understand her, we get our papers confused sometimes. Thank goodness! Because I got the bonus question correct, my grade was acceptable by my standards; however, getting back to quiz 2... sheesh! There was simply a problem that gave me fits! Neither one of my answers checked out correctly. Everyone else in the class is beyond caring at this point, so they finish theirs faster than you can snap your fingers. And here's Kris... plugging along, carefully checking every answer... So, of course, I'm the last one to finish, and I take every possible minute to do it. It's embarrassing. My problem never did check out right, so I just went ahead and handed it in and stressfully went on my way down the hill to Musalia's class. He was in such a chipper mood, and I could barely even smile because just as I reached the classroom, I all of a sudden realized I had forgotten to copy my math homework assignment down. *Bang head against wall here.* I could NOT concentrate for the rest of the morning. What made it so bad was that the teacher had just announced to us at the beginning of class that we are not to contact her about homework. We need to get it from our classmates. Well, shy little Krissy here hasn't gotten a classmate's name yet, thank you very much! So just what does a buffalo do?

Well, after I got to work, I composed a Very Humble Email to my teacher. Just how does one beg gracefully? I won't divulge the details of the Great Humiliation, but the bottom line is... she sent me the homework assignment.

So how exactly have I managed to stay awake tonight? Well, Sharon and I discovered WKU's library Monday night. It is open until midnight! It is so "booky," and the lights are bright and not at all conducive to sleeping. It is like a labyrinth and has scads of empty tables and study stations. So after my literature class tonight, I walked over to the library, walked across the covered bridge, took the elevator up to the ninth floor, went to the farthest corner I could find, and there I sat for the duration of my homework assignment. I didn't get home until 11:20, but at least when I got home and walked into the subtle lighting of my bedroom, I could feel free to go into shut-down mode without fear of it damaging my grades. I think I shall be utilizing the library a lot this year! This thing of sleeping with your light on is simply not a good thing.

My English class isn't going to be quite as bad as I had feared, especially as my textbook has finally come. That was also an Issue of Stress. Me, being the el cheapo that I am, ordered my literature textbook on ebay. It took a week and a half to get here, and I was about to start chewing my fingernails from the suspense of its arrival. I was supposed to have read two stories by class time tonight, and it's kind've hard to do without a book. I decided that for the five dollars I saved, it wasn't worth the anxiety of waiting. It finally arrived yesterday.

The two stories we read and subsequently discussed were "A Rose for Emily" and "The Jilting of Granny Weatherall." We had to discuss it in groups of four. We were supposed to discuss the author's meaning of the ending of "The Jilting..." and plumb...if I didn't sit there and tell three little girls about the concept of the church being the bride of Christ. They had never heard of such a thing. Two of the girls in my group also happen to be in my sociology class. They had to tell me that; I would never have recognized them on my own. I suppose I'm a little easier to spot than most.

As for "A Rose..." If you haven't read that story, you really need to. The ending is really quite shocking! Deliciously so.