"Dis-ap-POINT-ed!"

There are times--and they're especially prevalent at this particular part of the year, when good and bad debts come due, the faculty are fried, the kids are panicked, and generally everyone is just worn to a frazzle--when I've got a general desire to kick somebody's ass. Particularly the asses of bodies who haven't done their job.

Even more particularly when it has been admitted to me that a bureaucratic system malfunctioned at a basic, rudimentary level of professional competency. And most particularly when that lack of a done job, the lack of a basic, rudimentary level of systemic functionality, has victimized a student or students who those systems are supposed to be helping.

That is my definition of stress--namely, "when one's mind overrides the body’s natural desire." There are some organizations not too far from me--accustomed to way too much coddling, way too little work, and far too little sense of responsibility--some of whose members have forgotten who they're supposed to be helping. The stress comes in recognizing that compromise with these people is most in the student's best interest--if not in my own.

Dammit.