Dealing With Academic Burnout

Good morning and happy March! Before I start I want to acknowledge that I know my consistency with these posts has not been great recently. The past two weeks have been the busiest I have ever been in college. I had several big assignments all due at once and two midterms that I had to somehow find time to study for. I’m someone who takes school very seriously so when this happens to me, a blog post usually is not my top priority. Add on finding time to socialize as well as do necessary tasks such as grocery shop, laundry, and basic cleaning, I just didn’t really have a ton of time to write. I know that burnout is something that happens to everyone, but this week has been especially hard to want to continue putting out my best work for school. But I have found ways to combat academic burnout that I feel would be beneficial to share.

First off, if you don’t know what burnout is, it is basically a form of exhaustion caused by being swamped. For me, I get burnout a lot during this time of year with my classes. With the weather getting nicer and having been in class doing work for so long, my motivation to do assignments begins to dwindle and I tend to struggle to get work done in a timely manner. An assignment that would usually take me 45 minutes to complete now takes me an hour and a half because I spend all of this time sitting and thinking about how much I don’t want to be doing any more work. A great example of this is last week when I had three papers, two assignments, and four discussion posts due all on the same day. Because I had so much work to do, the drive I had to complete everything was basically nonexistent. I had no motivation because I felt so overwhelmed and had no idea where to even start on the work that I had to do. Because it’s me and I’m a stress case about school in general, the work did get done but in order to do it, I had to turn my phone off and sit in the library for five hours to complete everything which definitely was not ideal.

The one thing I did find comforting about this was that I’m not alone in feeling this way. My roommates and friends all validated my feelings and assured me that burnout is normal, especially around the midterm season. But while validation helped, I more so wanted a solution to my problem. Yes, tuning my phone off worked but I shouldn’t have to do that in order to get work done. And five hours in the library feels a bit excessive to spend on a paper and a few assignments. So here are some ways that I tackle burnout as a college student.

Firstly, my favorite thing to do when I’m beginning to feel overwhelmed is to write out everything that I have to get done for that week. I’m someone who hates paper and pen because my handwriting is messy and I never carry the same notebook around long enough for me to have a solid planner that I use every day. However, I still need to find somewhere that I can write down all of my assignments for the week where they will always be in a place where I can see them. I was at a loss until I discovered the desktop app WidgetMemo. This app is basically like a virtual sticky note on your desktop that allows you to write down everything you need to do and then check it off when you finish. I love this because not only do I get to see every task I need to get done as soon as I open my computer, but I also get the satisfaction of checking things off once I submit them (which sadly enough, motivates me to get things done way more than it should). Also sometimes I think I have a lot more work than I actually do (like this week for example) so writing down everything puts things into perspective and helps me realize that if I get a jump on it early, it’s not as bad as it seems.

But having a huge list of every single task you need to get done for the week starring at you in the face can be extremely overwhelming. Sometimes when I look at the list, it feels like I need to get everything done in one day or else I’m a failure. This is definitely not a great mindset to have. Usually, people would buy a planner but as I said already, I hate paper planners with a burning passion. I find that for me, they never get used and are a huge waste of money. But something that I do love is an online calendar. I find that they are always very neat and organized and I use them a lot more than I use a physical planner. I wasn’t sure which online calendar to use until a friend suggested I check out the website Notion. Notion is like a calendar, vision board, agenda, and organization tool all at once. It’s very aesthetically pleasing and allows me to plan out my week and which assignments I need to do on what day. By doing this, it allows me to visualize the amount of time I have to get assignments done and stress less about the amount of time I have to do things which is extremely helpful.

However, you could have all the necessary tools to get something done but in order to actually accomplish it, you need to want to do it. While these tools helped me, my drive to actually do the work was lacking and was causing me to procrastinate until the very last minute. This resulted in me not putting my best work out because I was too busy rushing to get it done rather than focusing on editing and revising. While this is definitely a hard habit to break, I found that doing things in small spurts rather than ll at once helps my drive and gives me more motivation to get my homework for the week done. Even this blog post I split into two days because, in the middle of writing it, I was starting to become drained and wanted to make sure that I put my best foot forward with the pieces I post.

I also found that turning my phone completely off helps me focus and get work done a lot more than when it’s just sleeping. Out of instinct and habit, I always tap the screen of my phone to check my notifications because I am addicted and like to keep up to date on what is going on. However, this makes focusing and getting work done especially difficult, and turning my phone off allows me to focus better and takes away the temptation of social media.

But I think the thing that has helped me tackle my lack of motivation the most is to acknowledge the burnout. The more I try and suppress what I am feeling, the more burnout I get. The minute I feel the feelings of being tired and unmotivated and tell myself what I am feeling is okay, the more work I get done and want to do. I’m not sure why I’m like this and frankly, I’m not sure if it makes any sense, but it definitely helps which is good. Once I realized working through the feeling rather than ignoring it helped, I got my motivation back a lot quicker than before.

Basically, burnout sucks especially when it happens during one of the busiest weeks of the semester. But what is important is how you choose to handle it. I could very well have just let the loss of motivation keep me from completing my tasks but instead, I chose to find solutions and strategies that worked for me. If you feel the same way it’s important to remember that you are not alone and that the lack of motivation you are feeling is totally valid. Just try and keep your head up and remember that the feeling will pass.

I hope you all have a lovely week!

- Meg