Being completely on your own in a city five and a half hours away from your family and all of your closest friends is stressful in itself. Throw in the factors of being both a full time college student and working full time as a server and you have hit the stress jackpot. My biggest stressor I mentioned throughout my previous journal entries was always my finances. I make $2.13 an hour, work five to eleven hours a day (sometimes fourteen if I’m working a triple shift), and I can make anywhere between $0 and $150 a day. I quite literally walked out of work the other night having made no money, when I had a measly $2 in my bank account. It’s the luck of the draw when it comes to waiting tables and I, unlike most of my coworkers, am responsible for all of my own expenses with the exception of my car and health insurance. Being the end of the summer my lease is up and I am leaving the familiarity of living with my best friend and cousin and diving into the unknown of living with a dear friend of mine (which, they say it’s never a good idea for best friends to live together) and a new friend, I made at work. As if the stress of finding a way to move and store my belongings isn’t enough, I also need to find a brave soul kind enough to let my over-sized dog and myself crash on their couch for a week.
I’ve become so used to McGraw that I often forget he is probably a nuisance to other people. That being the case, he is still my baby, a baby that can cause a bounty of stressors in itself. You would think I would have looked at my expenses a year ago and thought, “Maybe it’s best not to get a dog, nonetheless a large breed Labrador retriever.” No, I instead picked out the biggest pup in the litter and was astounded when he grew to be twenty pounds at 12 weeks old. Now, at one year old, he is pushing a whopping one hundred pounds and about forty-five inches long. I often get asked where I keep him seeing as though he is too big for a two bedroom apartment, which he lets me know by tearing things up while I’m gone and putting holes in my walls when I’m not looking. My biggest stressor that comes from having McGraw is the amount of time he is home alone. Constantly being in school and working, I fear that he doesn’t get enough time outside or enough interaction with other dogs which might, in the long run, cause him to be over-aggressive with strangers or depressed. I hate this idea because he is one of my biggest stress relievers. He unknowingly brings me so much happiness with his daily antics, the kisses he gives me whether they are voluntary or on demand, and his need to constantly be around me. Dogs really do make the best companions when you are under a lot of stress; they are essentially a silent support system.
This semester I was challenged to explore some new stress relieving activities. The first one I chose took me to Lake Nichol with some friends of mine. I chose this exercise because I could bring McGraw with me. I have always been a firm believer that any time spent outdoors is time well spent. Growing up I always had an affinity for our planet, even before I knew anything about the geologic time scale or the natural processes that keep our planet going; i.e. the water cycle, the rock cycle, upwelling in our oceans, etc… Whether I am hiking, biking, swimming, or diving, being with nature always has a way of helping me find my center; it helps me realize that whatever may be causing stress in my daily life can be overcome. Our beautiful planet has gone through so much to get where it is now, where we are now, and it is a great reminder that everything will work out. It has to. Needless to say, this exercise helped me exponentially, it’s an exercise I unknowingly used as a child and I will continue to use throughout my life.
The next activity I chose to explore was yoga, which also happened to be my group project presentation. When I first tried it for that journal entry, I wasn’t entirely convinced it was right for me… however, now I see I might have been wrong. When I was fourteen I was diagnosed with lupus, which is an inflammatory disease caused when the immune system attacks its own tissues; when I was seventeen I was diagnosed with fibromyalgia, which is a disease that causes widespread muscle pain and tenderness; and when I was nineteen they discovered rheumatoid arthritis in my spine and hips. My doctor actually prescribed that I start doing yoga once a week and see how it helped. At the time I didn’t listen, of course, but after taking this class and exploring the option, I see that it actually does relieve a lot of my daily pain and it is an option I am looking into adding to my daily routine. Another technique I thoroughly enjoyed and am adding to my daily routine is body scanning. At first I didn’t understand exactly how to do this or how it could work—but after practicing it for my journal and then later in class, I love it. I carry a lot of tension in my shoulders and neck when I am stressed and I could not believe how well it made that tension go away. Body scanning really helps me to calm down, clear my head of all stressors and negative thoughts, and relieves my pain in such a way that I come out of it more level-headed. I have a better idea of how to alleviate my stressors which are in my control and how to deal with the ones that are not in my control.
I have always had a tendency to become easily stressed over ideas of the future, expenses, and problems with my friends and family. This class has helped me to understand which stressors are in my control and which stressors I should do a body scan, and let go. Money problems are completely in my control, I used to think they weren’t because I don’t control how much money people volunteer to leave me; now I see that I can control how much I work, the attitude I have at work and with my guests can improve my tips significantly, and if I have rent due or a car payment that’s late I should probably forgo the bar. Other people’s actions are completely out of my control, what is in my control is the amount of time I spend around people whose actions I disapprove. I am thankful I learned how to relieve some of my stress in different ways, because I can’t always be outdoors. So when stressful moments occur in my life I now have other ways to deal with them. This is very important for me because having mentioned earlier all of my medical issues I have struggled with since adolescence, stress causes additional pain or headaches that can’t always be relieved medicinally. I think the stress management that work best for me are body scanning and being outdoors. Which, if you think about it, kind of go hand in hand?
In class we talked about cultural relevance and awareness. Being a white, twenty-something female, I feel like most people assume that I have an easier living situation than I do. My parents don’t have the financial stability to support my brother and me both, entirely. My mother is a sixty-two year old retiree that is still working part-time to afford the daily living expenses in my family’s household. Currently living in my parents’ home are my mother and father, my Uncle John, my brother, and my nephew stays four days a week. My Uncle John is physically disabled and has home healthcare, my father, who also has home healthcare, is recently back to work after five months of non-paid medical leave, and my brother goes to school during the day and works six at night to two in the morning. My mom cooks her pierogis and zrazy (delicious Polish cuisine) on a portable stove top or in a microwave oven because we lost half of our kitchen to hurricane Gustav. Now, let me step down off of my soap box for a minute, and lighten the mood! My family is full of love and happiness. I do not question for a single second how blessed I am to be able to go to school or know my family, my support system is incredible.
After taking this course I realized exactly how stressed I was by everything around me. I wasn’t enjoying school as much as I should, I couldn’t help my family, my health was further declining, working in a restaurant was so unfulfilling… But, after writing these journals, talking about my stressors and exploring new ways to relieve them or cope with them, I have truly discovered an improvement in my attitude. This class has helped me to realize that I want to write and photograph nature, so I changed my major from geology to journalism with a minor in geology. That in itself has relieved so much daily stress from my life. I am graduating sooner, I am excited about my course load, and I will (hopefully) be able to travel when I have a real job and see all of the beautiful parts of our planet. How stressful can that be?
Mary Kate 