Stress or Life?

Published October 23, 2007

By Lea McLellan

I was reading, summarizing, and analyzing all of the choral passages in Sophocles’s Oedipus and determining if they lived up to Aristotle’s views on Poetics, when it happened. My left eyelid started to spasm. It is now five hours later. I’ve done my Chinese grammar homework, made myself a peanut butter and jelly sandwich, started reading Aristotle’s ethics, told Aristotle’s ethics to stick it, went to power yoga, kicked some serious ass in intramural tennis, and took a WebCT quiz.

The twitching has since moved to my right eye.

The eye twitch is not a new one for me, but it has been a while. I think it was around midterms last year when my eyelid twitched for two weeks straight. Every morning I’d wake up, hoping and praying that day would be the day the spasms stopped. Fourteen days is a very long time to have a constant physical reminder of how your life is out of balance. So when I felt that familiar, uncontrollable blink this afternoon, I was a little freaked out.

I’m going to go ahead and assume I don’t suffer from a chronic “blinking disorder.” So according to www.eyedoctorguide.com (who knew??), I’m just tired and stressed out. But I don’t feel stressed. I actually feel pretty good. Plus, I got eight hours of sleep last night, so what’s the deal?

Well, like any concerned individual might, I Googled “stress test” in order to get to the bottom of my eye-twitching problem. Upon calculating my score, I immediately regretted this error in judgment.

The test asks questions about a person’s life situation. Significant change in personal finances? Yes, I’m jobless and my summer funds are dwindling. Change in residence? I’m four hours away from home in a dorm. Change in eating habits? Harris Millis makes me feel fat daily. Going back to school? Uh huh. Change in social activities? Check. Change in sleeping habits? Mmhm. The list goes on. Even without serving a jail term, retiring, or being pregnant, my final stress score totaled at 301.

This is what the Conscious Living Foundation says to people who score over 300: “High susceptibility to stress-related illness. Daily practice of relaxation skills is very important for your wellness. Take care of it now before a serious illness erupts or affliction becomes worse.”

My first reaction was to laugh. I don’t feel afflicted in any way.

And I don’t sense the eruption of a serious illness coming on. Okay, I could definitely use a nap. And maybe I am a little stressed, but so is everyone else. College is stressful. If every college student were to take this test, they’d probably all be at risk for frequent tension headaches and ulcers. The test doesn’t even take in to account whether or not you have a midterm on Wednesday and a paper due Friday (which you haven’t exactly started yet.) It doesn’t ask if you’re getting a D in chem., or if that guy you met last Saturday hasn’t called you yet when he specifically said he would. Balancing classes and homework with a social life isn’t easy. But we all find a way to do it.

Our capacity for stress and ability to adapt is actually pretty amazing. It isn’t like the average college student can say, “Well this week has just been awful. I think I’ll light a scented candle and take a bubble bath.” Bubble baths just aren’t an option. Sometimes sleep isn’t even an option. So we learn to live with our crazy lives without actually going crazy. We learn to choose between homework and hanging out. We may not always make the best decisions, but we deal with that too. And most of us don’t even have ulcers.

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