Monday, April 9, 2012

Calculating stress percentages

Sometimes you have to take a step back and try to look at life from a big perspective:

Lets say I live to be 100 (I like a good solid round and even number)

That is 36,500 days

The last 9 days have been probably the most stressful and emotionally exhausting of my life. I am feeling like quitting. However, everyone I talk to say's that is totally normal..... And getting a PhD or any degree is a major life event.

OK, lets do some math here, the average person has between 5-15 MAJOR life events, these include entering college, academic excellence (achieving high grades while in college) moving or relocating, graduating, retirement, having a child, adopting a child, getting married, serious illness and death. How many times have these occurred.....

Entered college 3 times? Eastern, WSU and OSU = 3
Graduated? High school, undergrad, masters and soon Phd = 4
Academic excellence.....? ummm lets say 5 (the past 5 years I have rocked it)= 5
Relocating.....? Once during high school, to college, to another college to another college and not to mention  moving every singe year while in college except for the last.... whoa so that would be....13 times (give or take)
Death? The most impact....the loss of 2 friends in high school and my beloved Grandfather Marve.
No adoption (unless we count Mugsy :) or babies or marriage or serious illness.

In total I have had roughly 27 major life events, ironic considering my 27th birthday is coming up.  Hmmmm, so in comparison to the average person I am considerably high in major life events. So, statistically it is OK for me to be a little stressed out or contemplating and questioning my life decisions.

Number crunching time: So, lets say each life event contributes to 2 weeks of stress, that is 378 days so far and in the FULL spectrum of things that is 26% of my life so far..... BUT only 1% of my entire life (378/36,500) If I live to be 100 and that doesn't account for other upcoming life events but it is nice to know that in the FULL SPECTRUM of life, this is a small portion of my life.

OK, back to work on grading a few papers, lecture at 12 then more data collection from 4-7.

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