It's a Shooting Pain... It Shoots from Foot to Foot

I think that's how it goes. It also goes something like, seizure, thinking you're dehydrated, realizing you're not, realizing that five days of head problems could be more serious than you'd like to admit. Has she gone to the doctor yet? Of course not, she's Sarah. She's too busy thinking about relatively insignificant things to be worried about her health. So I'm opening her up to the diagnoses of the masses. Symptoms:

• head pain, occasionally very intense in the right temple, usually an overall brain ache, hurts at the back of the skull much more than it should when I shake my head a very little bit;
• neck pain, pretty much the usual, but the muscle stiffness extends along my back down to about the bottom of my rib cage;
• jaw pains, intermittent over the past week, a dull my-teeth-are-too-big-for-my-face-and-are-all-rubbing-together sort of pain

Any thoughts?

What to Do When a Wolf Chases You 700 Kilometres and Tries to Eat You, Causing You to Have Seizure-Like Panic Attack:

Dear Geneviève,

During the past few months I have experienced a great deal of stress that has affected my ability to work and has affected my daily life. I find that overall, the level of stress I am experiencing at work, in my academics, and in my personal life is steadily increasing. After reflecting on this problem for a few weeks, I have decided that it would be best for me to resign from my position here at ***. As you know, I have had ongoing pay and employment status problems with human resources since September, and during the first three months of my time at *** had no fixed work station. I feel that these issues were not addressed in a timely fashion, and that the delays in these matters contributed greatly to the work-related stress that I have experienced. I feel that the manner in which these issues were handled indicates a lack of respect for my role and the contributions I have made. Had these issues been handled differently, I believe I would not have experienced the same levels of discomfort and stress.

During the summer, when I was not trying to balance my studies with work, I was able to cope with this stress better than I have since commencing school in September, but I nonetheless saw negative impacts of work-stress in my personal life. Now that my main focus is my academic work, I find that I do not have the time or energy to maintain productive work levels at work and at school. The weight of my work-related stress coupled with the stress I expected to encounter at school is becoming quite overwhelming. Thus I feel that my best option at this point is to leave *** so that I can focus on my studies and hopefully forget the stress associated with my time here.

It is unfortunate that these issues did arise, because apart from them, I found my experience with the ************************** quite satisfactory. I am grateful for the learning opportunities that you and the team have provided me, and for the friendships that I developed here at ***. I would like to thank you for the guidance you provided me, and for acting as an advocate for me in situations where I could not do so myself. I know that you made every effort to resolve these issues, and although it would have been ideal if neither of us had to deal with the stress of these issues, I am glad to have had someone as kind and genuine as yourself to share the weight of these challenges. I hope that we can continue this relationship and perhaps work together again in the future.


Sincerely,
Sarah Malik

Please Charles, No!

Last night I witnessed a genocidal apocalypse. Note to self: consider the option of taking this as a bad sign for POL 3162, Political Violence: The Comparative Study of Mass Killing. There were two sets of bleachers, each on opposing sides of the room. The room was surprisingly small for the considerable number of bleachers and bodies and significant amount of free floor that it housed. We were all dressed in dark grey-blue uniforms, which we had been wearing at the institute we had recently escaped from. Various members of the X-Men and several people whose identities I cannot recall filled the bleachers on both sides of the room. I cannot remember what he said, but in a telepathic communication Charles Xavier made a fatal error. The impostor using Xavier's mind failed to recognize that his assumptions about me were incorrect, and I was able to inform a few members of my team (actually just the people seated on my side of the room, which also happened to be Xavier's). Somehow, despite my warning and the team's disloyalty to Xavier, he managed to slaughter all but myself and three or four girls of roughly the same age. We awoke in the next room to see the after-effects of a nuclear holocaust through the windows. As we tried to rebuild some modicum of comfort I could not help but think of the blue-faced bodies stirring in the next room.