Mind and Body

I was thinking today, since my stomach hurts, about the relationship between stress and the gastrointestinal system. All stress, all excitement, all of everything really affects how my GI system works. And now that I'm sitting on pins and needles waiting to hear if I get a year-long position at Auburn, I'm feeling the stress. Even though I know that if I don't get the position, then I'm ok - I've got the assurance of the adjunct coordinator at the local community college that I can teach a couple classes, and I'm pretty sure I can pick one up at UT-Austin. But still....a real position with benefits has my stomach in wads.

Yet I was reminded this past week of what it used to be like when my little bundle of nerves in the stomach was even more freaked out by my constant digestion of foods the tummy didn't like. I was asked to audition for Kaplan as a teacher for the GRE or SAT this past week. But that means that I would have to retake the tests since my scores are more than five years old. My mother urged me to study for the exam, but I didn't feel that way and so I felt like explaining.

The first and only time I took the GRE was so I could apply to grad school. I was in the midst of my 12 year fun and games with explosive diarrhea, and since all that was made worse by stress, you can imagine how much fun it was to take the GRE - a test so loaded with stress it should be called such. I was living for the summer with my dad in Longview, TX, but the closest place I could take the GRE was at Stephen F. Austin State U. about 2.5 hours away. So I got up at 5 a.m., drove 2.5 hours under high stress to arrive and take the exam at 8 a.m. I was so stressed out that I had to get up TWENTY-THREE times during the course of the exam to go to the bathroom. I swear this is probably a guiness book of world record for the most times a person has to poo during a three and a half hour exam. Thankfully, the proctors only made me sign out the first 10 times - because you know they don't stop the time on your exam just because you are having difficulties with the restroom. (Now, I would just wear depends and clean myself up later, but that was then, this is now.)

I still scored a 760 on the math, a 760 on the analytical and a 700 on the verbal. The analytical has been replaced by writing now. And I figured after 30 hours of math in grad school and a Ph.D. in English, if I can't score well on all parts of the test, I definitely have a problem. And it isn't the bathroom!