Don't worry I pinched myself and i'm still alive

Weeks like these teach you many lessons. What kind of weeks are these? Ugh I am so very glad you asked. This week started with a ten page paper, an article for beat reporting, an ethics midterm, and silly little things along the way. The ethics test was by far the most stressful. I finished the 10 page paper in 4 hours on Monday, so Ethics was the one awful thing just looking over me all week.

I have woken up every morning with an neck ache. This morning I bent over in the shower and my lower back felt like it was about to die on me. Stress does dirty things to my body. But I still got up and took a shower and started doing whatever needed to be done to end the day on a sort of happy note.

Lesson from all of this? Yeah I'm telling you, in the thick of it there are lessons galore.

Lesson Number One: Things have to be done with tomorrow in consideration. I was hungry for a meal Monday night, so I made fried chicken and rice. I knew that Tuesday I would be leaving my apartment at 7:15 in the morning and not getting back till after 8 at night. Instead of dirtying the pots and pans Monday night for one meal, I made enough for Tuesday as well. I'm getting pretty good at this concept. Tonight I made amazing ghetto mac and cheese (what else would you call Walmart's version of Kraft mac and cheese?) with some fried up hamburger meat in it. I put half in my bowl and half in a plastic container for lunch tomorrow. It really works seamlessly when you get used to it.

Lesson Number Two: Responsible people don't save the world, but they sure do make it an easier place to live. I had the privilege of joining a study group for my ethics midterm. 4 out of 5 of the girls in the group (I'm on of the 4 in case you were wondering.) had extensive notes and knowledge of the material. It made my life sooo much happier. All of us worked together and came up with amazing answers. I would not be nearly as confident in knowledge of the material for the exam tomorrow if it hadn't had been for the responsibility of these girls. Some people have dreams and visions of saving the world. We all can't be Superman, but we can all be responsible and make someone else's life a little easier.

Lesson Number Three: Sugar is so much better when you're dealing with stress. I have gone through a thing of Vanilla Coke, two packages of gummy bears, and a Hersheys bar. I feel like if I hadn't enjoyed all of those things I might not have survived. That is just a theory at this point, but I'd rather not test it.

Lesson Number Four: Razers are dangerous tools that most women and men use every day. This doesn't really sound like a lesson, but it's just what I need to keep telling myself as I feel both of my shins stinging with pain. I guess being stressed out is not the best time for me to shave my legs. Some of you might not want to know that, but I really feel like it should be public knowledge that at the age of 21 after shaving my legs for probably 10 years I still manage to shave my skin instead of the hair on my legs. Matt would call this a fail.

Lesson Number Five: One of those weeks makes me love every other week. If I can make sure that I have breakfast, lunch, and dinner every day during this gross week; I can definitely do this on a normal week. If can make all of my deadlines and get help from people, why not during a normal week? During a week that I have free time, I am not nearly as good with time management as I am when I am crazy busy. Stop being lazy. If you can do it with no time, you can do it when you have time. This is probably the most important lesson of the week.

After doing a practice ethics test and making dinner, I finally sat down to relax. I caught the end of ABC Nightly New. Charlie Gibson told me all about the horrific things that happened in the world today. At the end of all of this he said, "For ABC News this is Charlie Gibson and I hope you had a good day." Charlie you make my heart melt. I hope you all had a good day and week. If you didn't and you haven't sat down to think about what you've learned from your awful day, then you've totally wasted a terrible day.

Happy Eating!!!

Emily