What stress can do to you
By the time I visited my doctor today, my symptoms had finished wreaking havoc on me for a couple of days, though I was still fatigued. An extremely stressful day started it: a horrible, often unbearable pain in my stomach that I thought might be a stomach flu or an ulcer, or feared that it might be allergies. I ruled out the allergies after the painful bouts had stopped, and figured it probably wasn’t a flu. Ulcers feel better when you eat, whereas after anything I ate, I would immediately be in pain. Two extra strength Tylenols were nearly defenseless against the pain, and only sitting back or lying down would ease it. Walking about, going up stairs (generally exercising), and sometimes even standing would make it worse. I could not do anything but lie on the couch in front of the TV, or sit at the kitchen table doing crossword puzzles and Sudokus. (I’ve now figured out the strategy behind the latter!)
I knew that it was stress-related, although while at the dentist today I realised my jaw was hardly bothering me, nor were my teeth especially sensitive. (I have temporomandibular jaw disorder, or TMJ, which is a non-fatal but sometimes painful “disorder” where the disc in your jaw on one or both sides is somewhat misplaced, causing the jaw to pop when opened wide. It is worsened by grinding teeth, which tends to happen during stressful periods, and can cause the jaw to lock if it’s very bad. The grinding can also be associated with sensitive teeth.)
Through my doctor, I found out that stress increases the acid in one’s stomach. It could potentially lead to an ulcer, but fortunately in my case it did not. I have never been so stressed out in my life! I’ve had huge workloads before; this time it wasn’t just the amount of work, but the type of work. (See previous post.) Being a graduating student, there is a lot of pressure to make something incredibly good — pressure from oneself, one’s instructor, and the standards set by previous years. I like to keep these things in mind, though, when I feel myself getting down:
– the last work I looked at from last year’s grads was their spring semester projects, which are naturally going to be better than fall semester projects (what I’m working on right now)
– most grads from last year seem to be older, have previous education and/or work experiences, have greater experiences in life from which to draw wisdom, knowledge and inspiration, and have seen more than I have both in terms of design and the world
I came to the Institute “straight outta high school,” and it seems many of my peers have. I also need to remember that everyone is different and everyone has their own strengths and styles. I’ll find my way. I have great passion for what I’m doing, so I know I just need to sit down and channel that into great work. That’s the expectation though: that it’s great — but this is just the fall semester. On that note, this is probably my last web project at school since I expect to be doing all or mostly print-based work next semester. (I may just end up going insane if it’s entirely print-based, but web is so demanding it’s difficult to do a 70 / 30 ratio or whatever of print-to-web. We’ll see.) I know that I still have much learning and confidence-building to do when it comes to print design. So far I haven’t really had the opportunity to do anything I’m passionate about in print.
Come to think of it, I bet most everyone will be doing print-based work once again next semester, so I’d like to stand out — but I know that work on the computers tends to get less attention… and I need to do print, for me. I meant to do some over the summer just for practise, and of course I didn’t… I did do some as client work, which was good experience, but it’s all been low-budget.
At this point, I’ve got to just take it easy and get to work before I kill all my brain cells by not getting any sleep. Tomorrow I’m going to see Griffin & Sabine on stage, so that’ll take out a few good hours I could be doing project work instead. And work, work. There’s always more of that. I think it would help if I wasn’t spending 12+ hours/week just commuting.