Before we get started this week, I need to let you all know something. This has not been a good week for me. In fact, I don’t remember the last time I’ve been this insane with stress, which is also stressing me out because I know I’ve been at this spot on the lunatic scale before, and probably around this time last semester.

This leads me to believe that having an extremely high level of stress is like giving birth.

They say that the otxocyin and every other hormone released during labor helps you to forget the pain of the event. Why? So your body won’t refuse to go through with it again the next time it comes up.

It appears that I will probably be this stressed again around this time next April.

But I digress. With two papers due last week, a test and various vagaries cramming this week, I am one harried individual. The worst thing about this is that I entered myself into this race to finish everything in the next week-and-a-half. I chose to be this stressed.

Seemingly, so has everyone else. Every conversation that I’ve heard for the past two weeks has turned into a competition over who has the most assignments to finish in the shortest amount of time, with extra credit going for how crucial a good grade is to one’s average in the course.

For the next event, we go on to bandy about who had the least amount of sleep in the past few days. The next step is to speculate how well those poor individuals are holding up. A winner is declared if one attends all their classes on less than two hours of sleep.

Then for the post-game show, we bitch about how all the other obligations in our lives besides class screw everything up to the point where all you want to do is sleep. Sometimes, a “Jock Jams” CD plays and fireworks explode in the background.

After that, we all go off to fulfill some more of those obligations but feeling a little better than when we first started the game.

That feeling of unity under oppression from the Man doesn’t last that long in the scheme of things.

Right now, I’m at the point where I feel the next few days will look like the movie “Groundhog Day.” I’ve been envisioning my sleep-deprived self continually in class or chained to the computer, with only short breaks for bread and water and catnaps in between.

Best of all, I don’t see this plan of action getting me anywhere grade-wise or pleasing any of my employers. Such a comforting thought.

Something happened to make me rethink this whole policy of crankiness, though. On Dec. 1, my cranky self was in a computer lab on campus when I got an e-mail from the local chapter of Amnesty International with the subject “Vigil Tonight for Lori Berenson.” That puzzled me. Who was Lori Berenson, and why hadn’t I heard about her cause?

Why should I go out to an establishment that I didn’t know how to find to maybe mourn for a woman that I would never meet when I had stuff to do to further my own cause?

Thinking about the e-mail changed my mind right away. It turns out that Lori Berenson is an American freelance journalist, and last Tuesday was the third anniversary of her incarceration in a Peruvian prison.

According to the Web site Free Lori at www.freelori.org, she had been living in Peru for about a year.

Berenson was researching living conditions for articles to appear in U.S. magazines when she was arrested on Nov. 30, 1995 and brought before a military tribunal the next day that was known for its high conviction rate.

Her crime? It was rumored that Lori was a leader of a terrorist group in Peru. Her sentence? Life.

As expected, her time in prison hasn’t been easy. The prison is without connection to the outside world. Food and water are hard to come by.

Berenson has suffered health problems from the high altitude and is an arthritis sufferer at the age of 29. Free Lori says that she has been in solitary confinement for the past two months.

The volume of my complaining was muted right away.

Why is writing a couple of papers and taking a couple of tests so bad when there are people being held in captivity against their will all over the world?

Sure, living in the dorms may suck, but how about living in an archaic prison that barely gets above 40 degrees?

How about living in a place with barely any food or water? That would sure make one miss food service and ramen noodles, wouldn’t it?

In these next few days and weeks, I urge you to look on the bright side when all your burdens become back-breaking. There are people in this world who would kill to be in your position.

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Tori Rosin is a sophomore in journalism and mass communication from Portage, Wis.