The school year has just started, and there is only one thing that causes these bags under my eyes: tests. It seems that our entire lives are burdened with one test after another, first the SSAT and soon the ACT and SAT.

Maybe you’re booked beyond belief with volunteering, sports, this, that, and the other; or maybe you’re constantly thinking about what you’ll write in that college essay or the mound of homework sitting next to you. Either way, we Uni students are usually pretty stressed out about something.

A lot of these blog entries are about stress. And I don’t know anyone who would have the audacity to claim that the Uni experience can’t at times be quite … overwhelming.

So rather than doing anything logical, like trying to examine the root of the problems, I am going to take this space and medium to explore different COPING MECHANISMS! Yeah!!!

1. Listen to Music

As we rush into the month of May, we find ourselves among a national testing craze. APs are right around the corner, the impending final exams are looming in the shadows, and the dreaded SAT exam is going down this Saturday. All around me, people are discussing SAT and ACT scores.

Procrastination is a way of life that many Uni students have come to know quite well. Some would argue that procrastination is almost an inevitability in respect to the amount of homework we receive.

Just recently I was able to experience one of the most relaxing afternoons I've had in a long time. After basketball practice I changed from my gross sweaty workout clothes in to flip-flops, jeans, and a jacket and made my way to Hada Cosmetic Medicine Center, located on 1 E. Main St. in Champaign.

Teachers pressure us. School counselors pressure us. Parents pressure us. Classmates pressure us. We pressure ourselves. We, as Uni students, seem to be under so much pressure that pressure is starting to not even look like a real word anymore.

Grades, test scores, college, sports, music, drama, and volunteering are all important things to us and to the people looking out for us, but there is something that could be even more important.
How about … our sanity?