Tomorrow is Dartmouth College Stress and Anxiety Awareness Day. I know this because my friend forwarded me a blitz about it.
"Is college life stressing you out? Difficulty concentrating? Anxiety? Physically worn out?"
Fret not, there is an answer. No longer will we weakly suffer heart palpitations at the hands of ruthless essay topics and reserve corridor time limits. How does the administration propose to slay the omnipresent stress monster? An information table in Collis. Pamphlets. More reading.
But only if you're stressed out between 11 a.m. and 2 p.m. Otherwise, no free massage for you. You'll have to find your own stranger to squeeze your neck in the middle of a public building.
Please do not misunderstand. Stress is eating me alive as we speak. The administration, which I believe is a genuinely well-intentioned bunch of people, has its finger on the pulse of a very large problem. College isn't all Parents' Weekend barbecues and Indigo Girls concerts. I doubt the 2001 parents realize how late their children stayed up to give their dorm rooms the aura of natural neatness -- to purge them of stale breadsticks with radioactive ranch sauce and piles of laundry so old they've evolved photosynthetic capabilities.
Dartmouth is rough on the nervous system, and I'm glad the administration is raffling off stress awareness door prizes. Because that blitz made me laugh out loud. And when you can laugh at the absurdity of what goes on around us, you can't possibly continue to gnash your teeth over an essay topic bearing the word "postmodern."
Sure, Kiewit's new printing policy is one of the worst ideas to come down the pike. While papers were available only at 30 minute intervals, I, like many in the pre-10 a.m. mob, desperately needed my paper for a class starting in five minutes. The pick-up desk swarmed with frustrated people, our collective blood pressure shooting off the charts. But then I looked up at the girl who was calmly sorting the papers, and I couldn't help but laugh. With dozens of grades on the line, this girl was the Sunday driver of Kiewit employees. While her placid demeanor would make her an excellent hostage negotiator, she has no future in speedy paper-clipping. I got a few odd looks when I began laughing, but in the end, my paper made it to class a few minutes late but anxiety-free.
This absurdity reaches beyond Dartmouth. On Monday, Microsoft guru Bill Gates demonstrated the new Windows 98 at a Chicago computer show. And what happened as the world's most powerful computer giant unveiled to the crowd his hot new product? His computer crashed. Just like my sad little Macintosh huffing and puffing to open Netscape 2.02. It goes to show, sometimes you can have the decks heavily stacked in your favor -- you can be rich enough to buy the world's share of decks -- and things don't work out. It must have seemed devastating to Gates at the time, but in years to come, anecdotes like that will be the grist of his memoirs. He will read them, and audiences will laugh.
On Monday, a plane crashed in Detroit. Of all the planes that crash in Midwestern urban centers, this one just happened to be loaded down with marijuana. Were the citizens of Detroit horrified at the senseless death of the pilot? Shocked by the blatant disregard for FAA regulations? No, many of them just grabbed as much pot as they could carry and ran away. I'm trying to keep a straight face, but I can't. It's tragic. It speaks to American moral decay, but it's irony in its purest form.
No one needs an Awareness Day to realize that stress and anxiety are alive and well. And while stress can positively motivate us, we shouldn't let it go too far. Everyone needs a release from the serious pressures of our lives. If you can't laugh at yourself, you are sunk.
