Eleventh Graders Have Shitty Lives

Mondays are my whine days. I'll I want to do is whine, whine, whine. Today it may be the about the completely meaningless weather talk I had to put up with in the elevator, the outrageous retardation of people buying fake Fendi's on Central Park South, or even the fact that chocolate cake doesn't exist sans calories and just HAD to show up in my hands around 2:00, minutes after my mushroom pizza from Fred's had left them. Thank god someone else out there is stressed too. I like shared misery. Which is why I loved reading the NY Mag piece on 5 of the most stressful jobs in the city. It's part of their "Peace and Quiet" themed issue which I will most likely devour in its entirety this evening. These five "extreme Stress Cases" included Tiffany, the EMT; Anna, the Momfuku hostess; James, the bike messenger; and Barrett, the air traffic controller. So far, pretty reasonable choices. Then I came to the last one, the eleventh-grader from Dalton, Mr. Sam Askin

Jesus Sam has it bad. I'll let him tell it to you:

Especially around college-application time, things get pretty stressful at school. In addition to all my academics, I take creative writing, percussion ensemble, and jazz ensemble. I don’t have time to play a sport, so I have to take a gym class, but the only time I can go to the gym is during my lunch period. Last month, in addition to regular homework, I had one week to write an English essay, a history essay, a creative-writing piece, a math project, and a proposal for a Spanish presentation—plus study for a math test, a Spanish test, and a physics test. Sometimes I’ll eat pure coffee beans to stay awake, but there is no day when I get to sleep late. Saturday mornings I get up at eight for driver’s ed, and Sundays I get up at eight for SAT prep. I have to utilize what I like to call “the nap factor.” I usually take naps on my couch. If I’m staying late at school, the English lab is pretty comfy.

I make sure I see friends on the weekends so I don’t fall into a dark spiral of depression brought on by hours of homework and a lack of human interaction. But probably the thing that helps me most is playing drums. I’ve been playing for a while, in school (as my art credits) and outside of school, in my band, Ibid. It’s nice to be able to rent out practice space for a few dollars and just beat the crap out of the drums for a while. It’s even nicer to think that beating the crap out of the drums might help me get into college.

Is it bad that I was smiling the ENTIRE time I was reading this?