Burnout: Mount Everest or an Ant Pile?
As I sit here, only just starting to write this blog post two days after it was supposed to be published, two and a half weeks from spring break, watching snowflakes swirling in a frigid, biting wind outside my window and seeing the bags underneath my peers’ eyes grow bigger and darker, I’m forced to consider the implications of Winter burnout. It seems to be an epidemic more severe than any illness on this campus, and in an environment as transformative and as crucial as college, where people are not only pursuing their wildest career goals but also realizing their individual identities and values, burnout just seems like one more thing to be worried about, another serving on the heaping plate that is the to-do list of a college student in February.
It’s easy to immediately feel overwhelmed or even completely futile. One overdue assignment turns into three which turns into a failed quiz which turns into missed meetings which turns into a wash of a semester and a meeting with your advisor to make sure you’ll still be able to graduate on time. Seasonally appropriate, burnout can feel like it’s snowballing without an end in sight.
Every time I have to add something to my to-do list, but I can’t reach something to write it down on paper in time, I write it down on my hand in Sharpie. I’ve done this since high school, and it always seemed to help me because it both made sure I actually wrote down what I needed to do, and because it was on my hand, so I’m forced to look at it. As I had to add more and more, though, my hand began to take on a gray tinge. My skin turned an almost rotten-looking color as I added more Sharpie-scribblings to my hand every day, going through hand washings, fidgeting, and more notes added on to my plate. In some ways, this method has served me well, because it’s almost a sort-of exposure therapy to all the things I’m trying to ignore. On the other hand (no pun intended, but since it’s there, I’ll allow it), the more ink that seeped into my hand, the more weighed down I felt by my obligations. I felt like I became my responsibilities, and the sense of worthlessness if I forgot to do something was exacerbated because it had literally been in front of my face the entire day.
This is the tough balance: letting yourself be independent from your grades and responsibilities while also holding yourself accountable. It’s a short step from forgetting to do something to blaming it on yourself and letting it define your character. The real skill, truly, is being able to really separate yourself from your burnout. Let’s say you have a post lab, an essay, and a midterm to study for. When it’s phrased like that, it seems like there’s a crushing, impending weight on your shoulders. It feels like so much.
But, when you really think about it, that’s just three things.
Objectifying your list like this makes it more digestible, and once you start, the momentum keeps you going. It’s the trepidation and the daunting fear of the amount of things to do that makes it seem like this impassable, impossible mountain of tasks. As soon as you start one, your list starts to get shorter. Just by even starting to think about an assignment instead of allowing it to loom over you like some corny cartoon storm cloud gives you the power to take the first daunting step in getting things done.
In an environment like college, everyone is rooting for your success. Just think about the fact that if you were to leave your laptop, notes, headphones, textbooks, and even credit cards unattended while doing homework on campus to go get a snack, you know that if anything were to be stolen, it would be your pack of gum. There’s almost an unspoken social contract between all college students, which holds even in such an isolating time like a quarter of the way through spring semester in the midst of a snowstorm, and it's that there’s a mutual trust and mutual investment in the success of everyone here. We're all going through it, we're all mutually suffering, but the culture of implicit support makes everything more approachable.
As I’m writing this, I’m realizing this is more of a motivational letter to myself to help me do my laundry or write an email. Burnout is so isolating, especially in the middle of winter when even the sun doesn’t feel like staying out later than 6pm. But just verbalizing how you’re feeling can make that mountain dwindle to an ant pile. Maybe this is all just my perspective, and you’ve gotten this far without hearing anything new about how to overcome the staggering burnout you’re experiencing, but you at least have to give it to me that you’ve read this far, and I finally managed to cross something on my list off that I’ve been procrastinating for two days, so at least one of us is a winner here.
