I dont think we have been formally introduced. My name is Mary Franzen, and I am a freshman with obsessive-compulsive disorder and a random case of panic attacks with just another generalized anxiety disorder to boot.

To sum it all up, I worry, I stress and I think.

Its completely unnecessary and unbelievably annoying. Sometimes it gets so bad I cant function, and I know that Im basically preaching to the choir.

Im sure I am not alone when I tell you the life story of anyone who was in high school and had some emotional issues “ therapy, psychiatrists, worried parents, worried friends, worried teachers, pills, pills and more pills.

Im not saying that all of that didnt help “ hey, I got into college didnt I? Barely.

Anyway with all the worrying and all the school, I dont have a lot of time to try alternative methods of relaxation.

Time is something all college students are short of these days. However, I have been told time and time again by every different cornerstone in my life that routine exercise can help because: One, you just start feeling better about your self and two, you have endorphins going like crazy and thats why the phrase runners high was coined.

I no longer have an excuse now that I live in the dorms. I live literally 300 feet away from the green room which has anything I will ever need to work out and for more machines, you can go to the Klotsche Center, which is located a full half block from the dorms.

For the rest of the semester, I will be everybodys guinea pig. I will be the runner and, hopefully, the success story of the worrier who literally ran away from her worries.

I will start with running a mile every day in the green room on a treadmill for week number one.

Week number two I will bring it up to two miles. For week number 3, Ill bring it up to three miles and so on and so on.

This is a plan I will implement everyday, whether theres rain or shine outside. I will try to keep readers posted every two weeks with how my legs are doing, how my weight is doing and, most importantly, how my worries are going.

So stay tuned for next time when we will see how much of a weakling I really am. But now I have a reason to do it, and my reason is you.

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