Have you ever had an itch you can’t scratch, or had a bad dream that you can’t wake up from? Well the last four days, in one way or another, have felt like a nightmare.

With all the stress that comes from being a student, comes the stress of working part time and the pressure of starting a career. I’m often left at the end of the day wondering why my nephew has grown so much since I saw him last. Everybody knows that school can be a big transition, and at times the truest lesson in life skills, and time management. But lately the stress that comes from always moving and never resting is talking its toll on me.
 Growing up we never had much, but I guess we had enough, so when I turned 13, I marched out with my resume and found my little self a job. Fourteen years later, and the picture for me is still much the same, always working just to stay afloat, and being a student isn’t helping that much.
Student life can be rough and I often wonder at the end of the day how we all manage.
For me, I have to credit the gym for being a huge stress reliever, and place to go and just get away from it all. Every time I go it’s a struggle to find a time slot, but I try to make it a priority in my life. Working out is a great way to celebrate the uniqueness of our bodies. I don’t believe I have ever left the gym and said to myself  “That was awful, I wish I hadn’t gone at all.” That’s because the gym is designed to be the one place that you can push yourself to the point of utter exhaustion and it’s totally expected. I guess I mean to say, that if I put half the effort into my studies as I did my workouts I would be a straight A student; instead, I’m in amazing shape. I can run for days and not get tired and do one handed push ups. But dragging myself over to my desk to write my stories for the week? Rough.
I remember one day in high school, letting my inquisitive nature get the best of me and I caught myself asking the smartest girl in school if she would trade her smarts for my athleticism. She was alarmingly clumsy and always last to be picked for teams, cruel really, but she was the one person you wanted to be paired with on lab day.  She looked at me and sighed, “I would trade you in a heartbeat.” It only confirmed my suspicions.
In our superficial world, how many people would trade straight A’s for a smoking body or a chance to play on the college basketball team? Who knows because the truth is a funny thing, everybody thinks it, but rarely is it spoken. Sad, really – they say honesty is the best policy.