How do you spell 'relief'?

I have been a ball of emotions lately. Maybe I should have wrote "bawl" of emotions. It's applicable...I haven't been this weepy in years!

Last Friday I picked up a shift at work and had the most horrendous night of my 10-year career. I ended up in the ladies room crying from all the stress. If that wasn't bad enough, I couldn't even grant myself sufficient time to have a good cry... I had to get back out there and try to hold the airline together. I left after a 12-hour night of such horrific intensity that it will tide me over for another 10 years.

If that's not enough I've been finishing up this semester in school and that means finals. You know me... I'm always robbing Peter to pay Paul the time I owe to one thing or another. As a result the only substantial studying for my A & P final came yesterday--and that would be the day before my final. 33% of my "comprehensive" final would cover the last 3 chapters (nervous system & brain) that I had barely looked at and definitely did not understand. Parasympathetic preganglionic neurons? Arachnoid villi? Are you freaking kidding me?

So last night I crammed. And I do mean crammed. I'm glad I did because I reconnected with concepts introduced in the beginning of the semester and sort of grasped what I didn't understand from the last 3 chapters. But I still dreaded this morning. Again, I damn near found myself in tears.

But I had an epiphany this morning on my way to take my test. No matter what my grade was or if I passed the class (even if I had nothing but 100's the entire semester I could still fail the class if I didn't get at least a 65 on the final--after the curve...see why I was stressing?) I still did what I set out to do when I registered: learn a lot more about the muscles of the body, the skeleton and joint actions. These would be things that would be most beneficial to me as a personal trainer.

Ninety minutes and two hundred and forty questions later I left the building, feeling somewhat confident that I had at least passed the final and, therefore, the class. My instructor told everyone that she would have our grades to us by tonight.

She got it done a lot sooner.

After the curve I got a 95 on my final. Overall that left me with a 90.14 for the class. That's a B.

If you'll pardon me, I'm going to go have a good cry. Then I'm going to finish up assignments due for my other two classes and study for those finals on Monday.

Does anyone have a Kleenex?