How to de-stress
Kate Rowland
If you are at all like me, you are a little strung out right now. End of the year projects and term papers due the last day of classes are building up. Finals, though not quite upon us, are certainly imminent. The knowledge that you have prepared for your history final by studiously not attending class and reliably never doing your reading should be reaching your brain about now. Even if youÕre a senior, you still have that minimum amount of work to get done to graduate, and most seniors have, as I have, put this all off as long as possible to hang about with friends.
But have faith, gentle reader. I have taken it upon myself to find a list of interesting and fun ways to help relax, without necessarily leaving campus and without taking up too much time.
Read childrenÕs books. I hit upon this one when my 22-month-old brother Derwin came to visit for the Blue and Gold game, bringing with him a copy of ÒMister Parrot Helps You Learn Your Colors.Ó After three or four hours of ÒHuman Genetics: A Molecular Approach,Ó Mister Parrot is damn amusing. I broke out my copy of the childrenÕs classic ÒHand, Hand, Fingers, ThumbÓ to keep him from tearing my room apart, and within seconds, I was the one who was sitting quietly on the bed looking at the pictures. If you are not familiar with this story, there is no good way to accurately explain its attraction, but it tells, in rhyme, what cartoon monkeys can do with hands, fingers, thumbs and musical instruments. As the climax approaches, you, too, get caught up in the action: first, there are just a few monkeys and a few drums, then many more monkeys, many more drums, and, by the final pages of the book, there are millions of fingers and millions of thumbs and millions of monkeys drumming on drums. You cannot help but laugh with glee at the pageful of monkeys.
ÒGreen Eggs and HamÓ and ÒGo Dog GoÓ are other favorites. You will spend days wandering around mumbling, ÒI do not like them, Sam-I-am.Ó A good way to de-stress your friends is to ask them, ÒAre you my mother?Ó then look absolutely despondent and say, ÒBut that was not the baby birdÕs mother, either.Ó They, too, will remember the tale of ÒAre You My Mother?Ó This book also has the advantage that, when you compare the plight of the baby bird with your finals plight, that bird has way bigger problems than you do. He thinks a bulldozer is his mother. You just think that Benzene is a chiral molecule!
If childrenÕs books arenÕt your thing, you could do what column consultant Zachary Hildebrand from Utah advises. ÒWe hicks out west take our .22Õs and go find some gophers,Ó is an exact quote from this ambassador from the other side of the Mississippi. He assured me that this does a lot to relieve stress, although IÕm not sure how destroying wildlife would make you feel better. On the other hand, I know some ducks that are asking for it.
Another column consultant shared her wisdom: ÒI do math,Ó said Sue Tregner. ÒDoing proofs relaxes me.Ó
With this kind of help, I went back to thinking up stress relievers on my own.
Play sports. Beat the crap out of someone else on the playing field. Pound that soccer ball. Run till you are physically incapable of caring about anything but stopping. It does you good. Towards the end of last semester I found myself on a Co-Rec Innertube Water Polo team. The farther along in the semester we were, the more vicious the games would get, but the better we all felt at the final buzzer. My Co-Rec soccer team this semester played its games under a similar philosophy. The last game was intense and downright gory at times. Sports are fun, and, except for getting kicked in the shins or getting repeatedly dunked, they make you feel better.
Sing. Loudly and out loud. No one will care, unless your roommate is studying. Everyone understands it is finals time and that the whole world is at the breaking point. So for those of you who were in C1 around 2 a.m. last Wednesday and heard two women singing along with Marc Anthony blasting from their car, the mystery of what they were doing is solved. They were letting go of stress in a positive manner. The part where they started to dance is another matter entirely.
My final suggestion: suck it up and get to work. ThereÕs no better way to get rid of stress than to eliminate the stressor. Write your paper, finish your presentation, prepare for your exam, and your life will look a lot sunnier. After all, your life is pretty sunny already. You know who your mother is.
Kate Rowland is a senior who will graduate with a diploma in Antonio Banderas studies. She will miss writing this column. She will miss all the people she doesnÕt know who read it and then e-mail her their thoughts on it. And she will miss the deadlines. Oh, wait, she does that now.
The views expressed in this column are those of the author and not necessarily those of The Observer.
All Viewpoint Stories for Tuesday, May 2, 2000
