May is a very stressful and demanding month for anyone that is still in the process of becoming educated. Over the course of its 31 days, students are tested and mentally as well as physically pressed and deprived due to an abundance of year-end activities and regularly cramming for exams. With all of this constant pressure on the body and mind of adolescents, fatigue quickly begins to take its course, but it can be quite difficult to recognize the extent of your exhaustion.

For the select few that made it past that academically-written introductory paragraph, you have made it to the substance: the story that will reveal the answer to the question posed in the title of this article, How Do You Know When You Are Too Tired? To answer this loaded question properly, one would normally seek a medical consultation, but there is no need for that to happen when you have an experience as I had just yesterday.

I will begin by stating all of the overwhelming things that I had to do this week to attempt to show you that I am not as insane and disillusioned as the following story will certainly make me out to be. I had my Spanish final on Monday, the AP Government test on Tuesday, the AP Language Arts test on Wednesday, my chemistry final on Thursday and the Biology End of Course Assessment on Friday. After taking all of these massive exams, my brain was completely melted and every morsel of energy had been drained from my once perky persona. I had misplaced my wallet on Wednesday. Misplaced is the word you use to describe something that you do not want to admit you lost, so as I was leaving school I decided to search under all the seats in my car and dig through anything that I had thrown in the back. I could not find the wallet anywhere - zero success.

After searching unsuccessfully for several minutes in the back seat of my car, I decided it was finally time to stop showing everyone in the parking lot what I looked like in my jeans and I ventured to the driver's seat with a very confused look on my face that was incredibly revealing of my mental state. As I was driving to my house I got behind one of my very best friends in traffic, and had a weird hallucination experience that had me believing I needed to slam my breaks really hard to avoid hitting my friend. However, nothing happened at all and I reconfigured after almost throwing myself through the window.

Once I arrived home I searched my room up and down for my wallet: I was on the floor, climbing on furniture and using a flashlight to explore any dark spaces it might have crawled to. As a last resort I called my friend and enlisted his help in finding my wallet. I was sick, crying and laying in a panic looking under my bed when he arrived and said, very comfortingly, “your wallet is right there in the middle of your floor.” And that, my friends, is how you know you are too tired. Once diagnosed with mild hallucination and severe inability to sort through what your eyes allow you to see, it is important that you get rest; and I promise I will, right after prom this Saturday. Oh, May, how I love you so!