>If you mind, you’ll need to go elsewhere, because I’m going to vent anyway.
I am stressed. How stressed am I feeling? Let’s put it like in Internet joke style.
You might be a wee bit stressed at work if:

• The piles of papers on your desk are so tall you can’t see the computer monitor.
• Lunch gets shorter every day as you keep realizing you have too much work to justify taking a full lunch break.
• You get a stomach ache just thinking about how much needs to be done.
• You look in your purse to find medicine and realize you don’t know if the one lone tablet is Immodium or Dulcolax.

Yes, that was my day today. I started my day talking with a special education teacher about an incident I had the misfortune to witness yesterday, and ended with a cancelled prep time because the Spanish teacher was sick. In between, students were off the walls wild because — hey, it’s May! Let’s be done learning! Every day!!

You may be thinking, “Whine, whine, whine. So — stop whining and do something about it!”
Okay. I will. Here’s my plan.

1. I will make a to-do list. Having a list helps me relax because I don’t have to worry about forgetting to do something.
2. I will make a “Ta-Da!” list for those things I accomplish from the to-do list.
3. I will stop multi-tasking — sort of. I will only attempt one or two things at a time, not more, so that I can actually see progress.
4. I will allow people to help me when they offer. I’m packing up my classroom, and good friends have offered to bring their minivans and help me with the move. I will say yes.
5. I will prioritize. Report cards have to be ready to go sooner than the moving boxes, so I will work on the gradebook first. The side benefit of this will be dramatic reduction in the size of the paper piles (see above).

I will keep happy songs in my head, or at least relevant lyrics. “Where’s the fire, what’s the hurry about, you’d better slow it down before you burn it out…” or “you’ve got so much to do, and only so many hours in a day, hey” and “It’s all right, you can afford to lose a day or two, oo-oo.”

(Trivia fans, can you name the tune? It fits the way I feel, but it still helps me settle.)