Story by ANDY LYONS, News Editor—

End of semester stress affects everyone, students and faculty alike.

With all of the procrastination catching up, projects due, and grading to be done, everyone’s stress level rises.  This can have a dramatic effect on our personal relationships.

For students, these relationships include our friends, roommates and significant others.

The extended due dates, presentation preparation and sleep depravity have finally caught up and we start to snap at those closest to us.

The major blowout for me came the Thursday before Thanksgiving break.

It was the last night my roommates and I would all be together, and the last night a friend that was staying at our house would be able to go out with us.

We began our night watching Thursday night football and eating pizza and of course, drinking beer.

As the night progressed, our friends asked us to go to Fitter’s with them, so we made plans to go down after the game.

I have one underage roommate, who was working but volunteered to pick us up from the bar if we needed a sober driver.

We rounded up the troops and went downtown with about eight people and kicked our night off by drinking liquor and taking shots and really just enjoying each other’s company.

As it got later, some of our group started leaving due to other commitments.

One of my roommates and a friend went back to the house.  Once the rest of us found out, we decided to head home and continue our Thanksgiving break celebration.

A night of lots of laughs and beer pong ensued.   Really, I was surprised at how great the night was going.  There was no tension and no drunken idiocy.  Until about 4 a.m.

There was an altercation between a roommate and another roommates’ girlfriend that I just put off as drunkenness and decided to go downstairs to cool the situation.

I honestly missed a lot of drama and it wasn’t until I was downstairs at my house, shuffling cards preparing for another drinking game, when one of my roommates came down and told me that the police were on the way.

Without going into specifics, the police ended up showing up at my house twice within an hour and escorting people out.

At that point, I flipped out. I was drunk and angry for really no reason whatsoever.

This semester I have worked around 100 hours a week between two jobs and four classes, and my stress level has been through the roof.

All four roommates have typically been pretty close.  When my roommates got into serious relationships we’ve seen them less, but that’s to be expected.

At this point though, relationships between the four of us have been strained at best and one of them is moving out.  It’s really a shame what the consequences of one drunken night can be.

It’s the end of the semester. Be sure to curb your frustrations and not use those around upi as something to take those frustrations out on.

And be sure that when you’re drinking you are doing so responsibly; you never know what will happen.