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Stress and Joy

2016-11-04 · letter vlog · Sabrina Cruz · 3:10 · watch on YouTube

Topic: Everyday life · mode: Personal essay · tags: guest or collab

Standing in for Hank during his paternity leave, Sabrina Cruz (NerdyAndQuirky) jokes about her stressful first term at university and argues that stress and happiness are a false dichotomy: good stress from work she loves has made her the happiest she has been.

What is said

The parts of the video and what is said in each (★ — how much it matters to the video).

00:00:00 — Sabrina introduces herself and jokes about falling apart at university: workload, 'suggested' problems, no sleep

  • ★★ Sabrina Cruz: Sabrina, standing in for Hank, introduces herself: she has just started university and jokes that she is falling apart. (playful) — 00:00:03
  • ★★ Sabrina Cruz: Sabrina says it is hard being a human being: everyone is stressed by different things depending on their work, relationships and age. — 00:00:16
  • ★★ Sabrina Cruz: Sabrina lists her university workload (midterms, presentations, essays, readings, 'suggested' problems) and jokes she would be crying herself to sleep if she got any sleep. (playful) — 00:00:27

00:00:50 — Stress and happiness are not opposites: good stress, privilege and laziness, the math-lecture realization, working towards something

  • ★★★ Sabrina Cruz: Sabrina's 'plot twist': despite the stress, she is the happiest she has ever been in her life. — 00:00:50
  • ★★★ Sabrina Cruz: Sabrina argues that we build a false dichotomy between stress and happiness, assuming happiness exists only when there is no stress. (hedged) — 00:00:54
  • ★★★ Sabrina Cruz: Sabrina says the biggest hindrance to her happiness for most of her life was a lack of good stress: not anxiety or fear of failure, but the stress of doing something you love that fills every hour. (hedged) — 00:01:04
  • ★★ Sabrina Cruz: Sabrina says growing up she could afford to be lazy, which she calls privilege, so she never worked hard or felt the fulfilment of pushing herself to her limit. — 00:01:27
  • ★★ Sabrina Cruz: Sabrina recalls sitting in her first math lecture towards a math major, realizing she does not know how to do math, and smiling instead of collapsing. — 00:01:45
  • ★★★ Sabrina Cruz: Sabrina allows the smile may have been a coping mechanism, but likes to think it was because she is enamored with knowing there is so much more to know. (hedged) — 00:02:12 · curiosity
  • ★★★ Sabrina Cruz: Sabrina says that for the first time she feels she is working towards something: the readings and writings that stress her are the same things that build the framework for her happiness. (hedged) — 00:02:21
  • ★ Sabrina Cruz: Sabrina says she spends her free time napping, and what is left after that truly appreciating her life, friends and family. — 00:02:46
  • ★★★ Sabrina Cruz: Sabrina concludes she is the most stressed she has ever been but the happiest she could hope, and it is good to know the two are not mutually exclusive. — 00:02:58

Humor (significant)

  • Sabrina describes what her love of naps and self-hatred have left her with — 00:00:06

    “the only thing that keeps me warm at night is the dumpster fire that is my life”

  • Sabrina mock-voices a professor explaining what 'suggested' problems means — 00:00:35

    “I am merely suggesting that you do questions 1 to 44, or else bad things might happen.”

  • Sabrina on how stressed she is — 00:00:45

    “I would probably be crying myself to sleep if I was getting some sleep.”

  • Sabrina realizes in her first math lecture that she cannot do math — 00:01:55

    “I have made a horrible miscalculation, probably because I don't know how to do math.”

Threads in this video

Where the stories that moved here went next

Mentioned

Central: Happiness · psychological stress · Sabrina Cruz

Also: curiosity · false dilemma · Intellectual humility · social privilege

Also centred on Happiness: One Scientifically Proven Thing Actually Makes People Happier · Cause for Celebration · Is Happiness the Goal?

Also centred on psychological stress: Raw Onion, Twerking, and Speech Jam · Let's Talk About Stress! · Finding Respite in 2018 · Doing This Makes Me Happy, but Maybe it Doesn't' Seem that Way? · I feel like I can't talk about this… · I've Not Been Doing Well

Also centred on Sabrina Cruz: NERD FACTOR! (...And Why I Fear for Tumblr) · The Ghost of Teenaged Future

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