"Pressure Pushing Down on Me"

Stress is the most fundamental college experience. Nothing else finds itself into every aspect of college life--it is with us during finals week as we cram months worth of notes into papers and exams...it is with us in our social experience as we try to reestablish ourselves in a new setting...it is with us in our professional aspect as we figure out what we want to do with our lives post-college...and it is with us on Saturdays as we worry about Ohio State's woes in the secondary.

 It is impossible to fully eliminate stress from our lives, but the best way that I lessen the amount of stress is to think forward and plan ahead. I feel that I have a really low stress level when it comes to work and school, for the most part, because I am a follower of the "don't bite off more than you can chew" philosophy. I'm really obsessive when it comes to planning things out so I can see the bigger picture. When it comes to stuff I can do, I don't worry because I'm confident that I can get it done and the effort I out in will dictate the result.

School doesn't stress me out too much...things that I can't necessarily control by preparing cause me to feel the pressure. I get really stressed after meeting meeting people and replying my interaction with them in my mind: did I come off as too goofy or too serious or too quiet? In response to this I have a real big problem of retreating and foolishly worrying about something that I can't control that already happened. Through all the self analyzing tests that we took, there was a common theme: I look in the past...a lot. I may worry more about things that happened because I have a tendency of breaking down the past more than focusing on the future. The problem might be simply fix my attention more equally to the future than just the past.