RIVER CITY JOURNAL: IN THIS BUSY WORLD OF STRESS, RELIEF IS JUST A SEMINAR AWAY

This has been a particularly hectic week, and I can't explain why.

All I know is that by Tuesday I was driven to drink.

Pepto-Bismol, that is.

I am not one to take over-the-counter medication. Every time I do, the cure is worse than the ailment.

But Tuesday I was ready to dance with witches if that's what it was going to take to get rid of the WWF wrestlers who were using my stomach for practice.

As far as I know, I've never been bothered by stress. For longer than a lot of you have been alive, I've been faced with deadlines -- as many as four of five every day -- and I've never felt before that deadline stress was affecting my health.

But this week, those maniacs in my stomach let me know that stress is something I should be concerned about.

At my age.

That's what my doctor says all the time.

"You know, Joe, at your age ... ."

Yeah, Doc. How much does this cost, exactly?

One of the many events on my calendar this week was a conference of high school students involved in student publications. "Student publications" covers a lot of things, including yearbooks and student newspapers. The conference was at the university, and about 250 students and their advisers were there.

I was asked to speak to the group, as were several other editors here at the Southeast Missourian. As soon as I arrived at the University Center, I realized what I considered to be stress was really the cure for stress.

Those of you who can count high school reunions in multiples of 25 know exactly what I'm talking about. Despite the passing years, students still sign up for conferences and field trips for the same reason we did: no stress.

Let's face it: A day at a conference in Cape Girardeau is a day without pop quizzes, book reports and equations. Heck, I'd spend two or three hours each way in a big yellow schools bus for that.

When I was in high school, we didn't take so many field trips. I think that's because we didn't have very good imaginations.

Like the time someone suggested during study hall that we should could take a trip to St. Louis.

We all sat there for a few minutes thinking of about the luxury of a day away from the classroom routine and PE -- and even study hall.

Finally, someone said, "Yeah, but what would we do?"

See? We were totally underdeveloped in the conniving department.

The high school band took quite a few trips. We went to the DuQuoin State Fair one year.

And we went all the way to Potosi another time.

I particularly remember the Potosi trip, mainly because I had never been there. That's the way I am. My wife and I moved from New York City to northern Idaho once because we had never been to Idaho. It sounded like a good reason at the time.

But Potosi, for a farm boy from Kelo Valley in the Ozark hills west of here, was a cultural experience. We got to eat different food (the Potosi school cafeteria didn't serve peanut butter sandwiches with chili -- can you imagine that?). We got to see how different people dress (kids in Potosi didn't turn up the collars on their shirts like we did, but they did roll up the sleeves of their T-shirts, which was entirely new to us). We got to practice our language skills (In Potosi, they talk a lot like people in St. Louis, which is practically a foreign language, if you know what I mean).

So when I saw those 200-plus high school students in the audience at the conference this week on student publications, I immediately relaxed. They were there for R&R. Why not me?

And when I saw a few heavy eyelids midway through my talk (one girl asked afterward why it was called the "keynote address," which I thought was a good question but didn't have a good answer at all) I knew it wasn't because I was so boring. I understood these students needed a well-deserved break.

Here's the way I figure it: If I had been talking to a bunch of newspaper folks who had paid $50 bucks a head to attend a seminar (lunch included), maybe one, possibly two, of those journalists would have gone away inspired by anything I said. So, if out of those 200-plus students even one or two goes on to win the Pulitzer Prize, it was worth the hour of my time.

I'm totally relaxed now.

As a matter of fact, I'm looking for more speaking engagements in front of folks who understand that "seminar" is just a fancy name for a holiday with required attendance. I can't think of anything less stressful.

~R. Joe Sullivan is the editor of the Southeast Missourian.