La ciel est tombe

For lack of insight or creativity, I decided to name my blog, "La ciel est tombe", which translated out of French means, "the sky is falling!". That sentiment pretty much describes my feelings about junior year in general, especially this past week. I've been running around like crazy, (kind of like Chicken Little when he thought the sky really was falling), trying to get all my applications in before the March 1st deadline, writing debate case after debate case, and trying to finish this ever-growing mound of homework teachers are piling on us.

These thoughts started going around in my head after I was reading through some of the Defining Moments Essay Drafts on our Wikispace. I read one essay in particular that talked about her struggles with junior year, and I thought she did a really good job in capturing all of the emotions she was feeling about this year. I could relate to the long, homework filled nights with little to no sleep at all, and the feelings of desperation and panic that the author of the essay described. While sick at home this past week, frantically trying to finish my work while coughing and rasping with a sore throat, I got some good advice that pulled me out of my work-induced panic state. A college freshmen I knew who used to go to my school last year talked to me about how to take a step back, and reevaluate the things in my life, to figure out what is causing stress, and what is really important to me. He shared his own experiences of procrastination as a senior, and gave me some advice that I thought was worth sharing. He told me that stressing about something wasn't going to change the outcome of what I was stressing about.

It seems like common sense now, but the logic of it pierced through my feverish state to make me calm down. I realized that he was right, and I was able to take things one step at time, and finish my work. Stress will always be a part of our lives, but how we deal with that, and any other variables in our lives are what defines us, now and in our future.