Living in a rural state, in a rural town, means learning how to drive. You can’t hop on the mass transit and go to the mall or wherever, or get where you need to go. You either con rides off people or you learn to drive.

Learning to drive presents its own problems. If you are a student who is learning to drive during the school year, your work load has been tripled and your social life has become non-existent for a while.

You sit in the a classroom, after having spent seven hours already in school, for up to three hours a day, three days a week for three weeks and a day. You have to get in ten hours of driving time, read the Maine state driver’s Manual, and try to maintain your grades in high school.

If you are an A student in advanced classes without a study hall, you quickly learn the meaning of an all-nighter, how little sleep a human can run on, and where you can get that sleep without falling asleep in class. If you have a study hall, you have less to worry about, of course. If you don’t care about your grades you have no worries, but of course we all know that grades are important right?

To get your driving time you schedule on weekdays during time when you might be doing that five page essay due at the end of the week or the calculus homework that you don’t understand or any other bothersome homework. You also schedule on the weekends when you try to play catch up and stay ahead of the homework, squeeze in time with your friends and significant others so they don’t feel neglected. Then there is the important time with your family, particularly if family is visiting from away.

Of course all this bother, mess, pulling of hair, and the gray hair in your parents’ hair that wasn’t there before results in that oh so lovely piece of nice white paper that says you can drive with a responsible adult. Hallelujah! No worries, right? Wrong! Six months later you have to pass with no faults-that all important driving test. Before that you have to get in 35 hours of drive time, five of which are in the dark.

After all that you finally have the freedom to drive. You can get where you need to go when you need to get there. You have an important life skill and a big responsibility for yourself, anyone with you, and others on the road.

Here are some tips to handle this stressful time:

1) Wait until the summer if you can. You will have a lot less stress and will be able to concentrate better on learning how to drive.

2) Prioritize. Figure out what is the most important, second most important, and so on. What really matters? Do you really need to go see that movie when you have homework and driver’s education the next day?

3) Learn time management. Organize and effectively use your time. Is an effective use of your time surfing the net when your math needs to be done? Figure out times when you can do your homework and set aside that time to do it.

4) Leave yourself plenty of time to do your homework. The more time you have to do it, the less stressful it will be.

5) Set aside time to read the manual. It will help you a lot in class and make sure you read it by the time you have the first test. You will do much better.

6) Practice driving in the car you are taking your driver’s test in before going to take the test. The smaller the car, the better for parallel parking and turns.