The Inside Scoop

This past weekend I went hiking and camping up at a place in North Georgia called Panther Creek with my eight closest friends. We went to go see a waterfall, hike, camp and get away from it all.

We left last Friday afternoon and drove up to North Georgia. We arrived at the site at around 9 that night and got all of our stuff together.
We then hiked for 3.5 miles in the dark. It was a lot of fun hiking out there, even though I was very tired and had been sick the past week.

We arrived sometime later than night,(probably around 11:30 or 12:00), at a campsite and tried to set up camp and start a fire and other things. I think when we arrived I was the most tired I have ever been in my whole life. The main reasons for my being tired was that I was really weak from a virus I had dealt with earlier that week, also my pack was heavier than it should have been, and we hiked really fast(compliments of my good friends Kyle Hale and Janna Donahue, love you guys).

Well, my whole point of describing my trip to you was that this past weekend I was not only physically a couple hundred miles away from school, but I was mentally a couple hundred miles away from school. These past few weeks have been full of nothing but work, work and work, and it can wear on anybody. It does not matter what year in school you are, because the longer you are here, the more you want it to end. In fact, I returned from my camping trip only to study for two tests, write a 5-page paper, and complete a science project all on Tuesday. I have only four classes on Tuesdays and Thursdays and I had my teachers from all four requiring more time from me than I had to go around.

Well, needless to say, while I was on my trip I did not bring any textbooks, homework, and anything that had to do with school. It was my mini-vacation, and I had a blast.

Saturday morning we slept in until 11a.m. We then had some breakfast, took our tents down and packed up camp. After that we decided we were then going to hike another 4.5 miles to a dam that was further up the trail. But after about one mile straight up a precarious mountain, we decided to turn around because we still had to hike our packs back another two miles that night and camp closer to the road so one of my friends could leave early Sunday morning.

Well, when we got back to where we had hid our packs and camped the night before, guess what we did? We sat around and did nothing, and it was amazing. We watched the waterfall nearby, we climbed on rock in the middle of the river the size of cars, and, last but not least, we did not think about school even one time. Later that night, after hiking half of the way back to the place where we parked our cars, we camped and made a big campfire. That night we sat around, ate some dinner, made smores, and played games until we were tired. The next morning we got up around 11, hiked out, and then drove home.

I am telling you all these things only to illustrate how important it is to take some time out for yourself every once in a while(I know I needed it).

You can go to a sports game, go hiking, go on a road trip, or just do something that can take some of the stress of school away. Stress is not healthy for you. It can raise your blood pressure, give you headaches, make you sick, or just make your life plain miserable.

So these next few weeks before Thanksgiving, while exams are coming fast and hard,and teachers are giving you project after project, test after test, paper after paper, don’t give up. You need to stick in there and help yourself out by taking some time off for yourself, your thoughts, your health, and, most of all, just for you.

Posted by Colonnade Archives on Oct 26 2001. Filed under Opinion. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0. You can leave a response or trackback to this entry