Even if you’re not a sports fan, you’ve likely heard the term “March Madness,” and yes, it’s upon us again. The term refers to the NCAA Division I Men’s Basketball Tournament, which originated in 1939 at the hands of OSU coach Harold Olsen. The tournament features 32 teams from Division I conferences, and 36 teams that are selected by a NCAA committee and announced on “Selection Sunday.” These teams are then divided in four regions and organized in a bracket, which determines who the winners of each game will face in the next round.

The bracket starts with 64 teams (after play-in games), and advances through rounds such as the Sweet Sixteen, Elite Eight, and Final Four before ending with the National Championship game. The games occur over the course of three weekends, which is where the term “March Madness” comes from. On any given day during the first couple of rounds, there are multiple games being played at the same time.

Below are the three most stressful things that occur during the tournament for fans and teams alike:

Bracket Busters

For those who fill out brackets, either with the old-fashioned pen-and-paper or via the ESPN TC app or website, know the absolute agony of a bracket buster. A bracket buster is when a lower ranked team upsets a higher ranked team to advance to the next round. It’s agonizing because, depending on how you’ve chosen, your entire bracket can fall apart at any given time. Say you choose Duke to win it all, but Duke ends up losing to South Carolina. Your whole bracket is, for lack of a better term, busted. Better luck next March?

Buzzer Beaters

I don’t know what it is with basketball terminology and the double Bs, but buzzer beaters are the moments during games when a game is close (within three points) and the losing team shoots with seconds left on the shot clock. In the milliseconds that the ball is in the air, everyone watching or participating in the game is holding their breath, especially if your bracket relies on that win or loss. Talk about anxiety…

Keeping Up With Daytime Games

If you, like most humans, have a job or go to school, you’re going to miss games. So far, I’ve yet to see any game in its entirety. Luckily, the ESPN Tournament Challenge app keeps track of wins and losses for me, but in the olden pen-and-paper days, I had to track scores and mark my bracket accordingly, which was hard when I didn’t get to see the games. And what if your favorite team plays smack dab in the middle of the day?! How do you get away with watching it while at work? And how do you keep quiet when you want to scream at your team to step it up while watching it on your phone in a stall when you’re supposed to be in class? Stressful.

The reason it’s “Madness” is because I don’t know that anyone can really keep up until the Final Four, and even then, it’s stressful because your entire bracket could be riding on any given team. My best advice? Fill out a bracket if you’re gutsy enough, then don’t follow along if you want to avoid any basketball-related anxiety, or if you don’t have three weeks of vacation time saved up.