Suzanne Graham

Some of you have kept up with my Darling Daughter for four years through this blog. She is graduating from High School later this month. Today was the focus of all her senior year stress. She is taking three dual credit classes. That means she is taking classes through our local community college. She will get both high school and college credit. A lot of the seniors are taking college Freshman English this semester. DD is also taking Accounting and Economics. All three of her finals were scheduled for today! If that wasn’t enough she had two papers due last week before the finals – one of them a major research paper.

It would be difficult to come up with the words to describe the stress level around here. None of us have gotten anywhere near enough sleep. That is particularly bad for DD as a Type A. However, I mix a little coffee with her morning soy shake to get her going.

There is not much we can do about the number of hours in the day. However we can control our exercise and what we eat. DD hasn’t had an avoid food in more than two weeks. Almost everything she has eaten has been beneficial. I could have said the same thing until lunch yesterday, when I ate a few pinto beans that were in my taco salad.

We have been exercising together to hold each other accountable. There was one day when she finished up a paper so late that I convinced her to go to bed without exercise. Other than that we have used physical activity quite effectively to disperse stress.

By 9:00 tonight she will be through with the toughest part of her senior year. She has tests and projects in her regular high school classes, but they are nowhere near as intense as the dual credit classes. She does not have to take high school finals as long as she keeps her A averages. So, while she doesn’t exactly get to coast to the end of the year, her stress level should drop dramatically.

I, on the other hand, am facing my most stressful day of the spring next Monday. Half of the yearbook is due at the publishers. I worked long hours this weekend to consolidate all that the class has done and assign pages that have to be finished by Friday.

Bring on the beneficials and the intense exercise. I’m going to need it this week!