Oh hi.

I’ve got a free test for stress for you, if you answer the following: Are you stressed? (Check yes, no, or maybe.)

If you selected yes, then you are indeed stressed. Bummer.

Could have fooled me.

But at least the test wasn’t too bad.
Unless you think a free stress test is actually stressful because it’s a test. If so, sorry about that.

Stress is something that constantly hovers above our heads. I’ve already used some form of the word six times. If you went back and counted, you’re one paranoid son of a jackal.

Anyway, some people like to say that if you don’t put pressure on yourself you’ll never find out what you can accomplish. Those are just words. Stress still stinks.

And in light of midterms, where has the Massage-A-Thon been?

You know, studies show that the person who gives a massage gets just as much stress relief as the person receiving it. Studies also show that Buzz Williams should not have victory danced in front of the West Virginia fans last Friday.

But since the first study is actually legitimate, the PT students should
really think about offering their masseuse -abuse more often. Or if you’re a free thinker, you might say they should pay us to get massages.

By the way, if I somehow get a voucher for a free massage from this, I’ll definitely give it away to one of my loyal readers. Just a heads up.

Now back to stress. I guess I should just state my observations over the years as a lazy college senior. I also guess I should say it’s worth it to keep reading, but I can’t tell you what’s next without spoiling it. Hardy har har.

So I’ve got two things I think are worth mentioning for dealing with stress, and the first is something I picked up from
action movies.

The key is to choose things unrelated to important life tasks to be your stressors. Most people would rate things like deadlines, relationship conflicts and life-threatening scenarios as sources that could bring the most stress. Super cool debonair characters are calm under those pressures since their stressors are random, trivial things.

Indiana Jones is at constant vigilance when he’s around invisible floors and killer boulders, but they don’t stress him out, per se. Snakes do. If you put a snake in Indiana’s boots, you better believe he’ll scream for Woody from Toy Story to get that @!#$ the &#*% out of there.

Ahem. Excuse me.

The second and more realistic technique is exercise.

It’s a proven fat — I mean fact — that physical activity is good for brain activity. The problem that most people have around “hell week” is their excuse of not having enough time to exercise.

I say phooey, because they’re actually too busy not to, since the benefits of
exercising can’t be replaced by Red Bulls or any other color bulls. Your brain will make up that lost time twice over.

And if you don’t do well on your exams, at least you looked good doing it.

In the end, of course, instead of picking something stupid to be stressed about, we pick something stupid to help us deal with it. I doubt I’m the only one peeved by the ever-popular stress reaction of distracting ourselves with Facebook and Twitter. It’s way past the point of being self-defeating when we deal with stress by announcing our stress from atop the social media mountain.

Recognize this status? “It’s 4 a.m., why am I awake?” Clearly you’re awake because you have a bright screen shining in your face.  If it’s 4 a.m., why are you on Facebook? At least waste time making funny Marquette related memes or something.

But really, I’m not here to pretend that things we stress about aren’t ever going to go away. If there’s something that’s freaking you out because of how significant you presume it to be, then it probably is important.

You should take care of that. As for me, I’m all stressed out. Ba-dum tssshhh.